


An Error in the System

by Winterstar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Computer Character Deaths, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, Reference to dubious consent, Slash, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Virtual Reality, heart issues, post-avengers age of ultron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:55:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27746320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: When the Avengers faced Ultron, they believed that Vision completed his task to lock Ultron out of the internet. After Sokovia, no one thinks that Ultron survived. Everyone is wrong. Ultron’s code persists, hidden in the deepest trenches of the internet. Soon, it rises to cause chaos around the world and the only way to stop a catastrophe is to meet Ultron face to face. But Ultron is computer code – elusive, persistent, and viral. The only way to confront him is to meet the AI on equal footing within the bowels of the internet itself.  Steve and Tony enter the virtual world of Ultron’s mind, passing through the rims to get to the center Hub of the AI’s existence. Along the way they face challenges and nightmares, hardships and truths. Truths that hurt and haunt them. Now they have to deal with a genocidal killer AI, and a truth that could destroy them.  Steve blames himself for everything that went wrong with his relationship with Tony, but that doesn't mean he isn't still hoping and pining for someone who will never love him in return.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 78
Collections: 2020 Captain America/Iron Man Big Bang





	An Error in the System

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the mods for putting this challenge on and for stepping in when my artist had to drop out. Jellybeanforest literally picked my story at the last minute and made the most wonderful art for it! Thank you Jellybeanforest! You are a hero!! 
> 
> Sorry for pasting this in one big post. My real life beckons and I don't get a lot of time anymore.

An Error in the System

**PRELUDE**

Fuck this. Why did he ever agree to this? 

Tony opens his eyes for only a second before he slams them shut again. His heart stampedes in his chest and he gasps for air. This isn’t the way virtual reality should hit him, but then again this isn’t a virtual reality game – this is a real life and death scenario that he somehow trapped himself in. Not somehow, he did this deliberately.

His first inkling that something was amiss arrived in the form of a simple reboot. A need for diagnostics Tony understood; he had built it into every computer system, artificial intelligence, and suit of armor. Diagnostics led to identification of a problem or problems and then finally to a solution. A reboot? That called forth the idea that a problem existed that his diagnostics could not isolate, could not detect. There was an error in the system that was an unknown.

Tony never liked unknowns.

Unknowns in math represent an unknown quantity or numerical value. Unknowns in science represent questions or hypotheses that have not been tested or cannot be tested with the current technology or knowledge. None of these ever stopped Tony from getting to the value of the unknown.

When Friday insisted that the system must reboot, Tony had slumped back in his chair in front of a console of screens. He had been visiting the Avengers campus in upstate New York. He’d decided to come for a weekend since his trip to see Pepper had been cut short. Cut short in that she had no interest in getting back together and he had to agree. They worked better apart than together.

Now, in this vast virtual reality he only wants to escape and find his way back to Pepper, beg her to take him back, blow all the suits again. Carefully, he opens his eyes, and a tiny moan slips out. He doesn’t mean to react, but the sheer information overload of the virtual world sends his stomach into new heights of queasiness. Colors swarm his senses, swirl around him in an array of possessed demons. He turns over and heaves into the grass. 

Grass – at least he knows that much. He’s lying in a field of grass. He closes his eyes again and reviews the steps that got him into this mess. A computer fault, a breakdown of the internet, a search, and finally a discovery.

Ultron isn’t dead.

He should have known better, considering how brilliant and far seeing he usually prides himself on. He admits now, he was damned tired. Exhausted even, he wanted nothing more to do with the idea of Ultron and his actions to put a shield around the world. Blow up every single robot, combing through the internet to ensure that Ultron was gone should have been enough, but Ultron’s intelligence had been based on JARVIS and JARVIS had been based on Tony’s brain. It’s reasonable to assume that Ultron would have found a way and it did.

Ultron holds the world hostage and the only way to stop him is to go straight to the source, on the AI’s level. 

To the heart of the machine.

CHAPTER 1  
**INTERLUDE:**  
**SYSTEM PROCESSING. LINK ACQUIRED. SUBJECTS INITIALIZED. DIGITAL FORMATION UNDER WAY….INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL.**

Natasha examines the two supine figures on the twin gurneys. It would be better if Bruce were here to monitor their vitals. Even with all the equipment scattered through the room, hooked up to Rogers and Stark (she had to think about them this way otherwise the flaking pieces of her that had started to peel away would crumble and fall), it still isn’t enough to give her peace of mind. Inwardly she curses Bruce and Thor since both of them have abandoned the Avengers. Well, that isn’t fair, Bruce left her. She cringes and picks up her gaze to look at the other conscious occupant of the room. 

“It’s gonna work,” Sam says.

“You keep believing that, maybe it will.” She smiles sardonically. She tries, she really does. But right now, she’s about to throw herself off a cliff in sacrifice to just have this whole thing over. 

Sam steps over to her, gently places a hand on her shoulder. “It’s gonna work.”

She smiles but this time it’s just sad. She wishes she had that kind of optimism still, but at least Sam’s here. At least his hope might help them through it. She glances at the read out on the screen above their heads. It flashes. 

_SUBJECTS CONSCIOUS…SERVER INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL._

Natasha clasps her arms around herself as a cold shivers through her. They’re on their own now. In there. With a homicidal robot.

**oOo**

When Steve wakes up his head pounds like a raging beat of drums in some of the modern music of the day. He groans and closes his eyes to the bright colors amassed over him. He feels like he’s in the eye of a tornado, a peaceful place surrounded by chaos. Everything around him bangs and clangs and he needs to navigate out of the chasm into his new reality. The headache burns his sinuses and aches at the base of his nostrils. He rolls and feels soft freshly cut grass against his cheek. He clings to that information and grapples to get his bearings. The pain in his head accelerates until he shudders and his body balks at it. 

A hand touches his shoulder and then a quiet voice says, “Just puke it out, you’ll feel better.”

The suggestion elicits a reaction deep in his gut and he moans. His throat tightens and his salivary glands contract. He lifts up onto his outstretch arm in time to spew what little he has in his stomach. The comforting hand strokes up and down his back and he vomits again though it is really only a dry heave. His body trembles and he almost falls into the mess but a strong arm yanks him away from it. 

Squinting, he opens his eyes again to the brilliant lights around him. Closest to him is Tony, though it’s hard to make out his features with all of the digital input. He waits for his eyes to adjust, blinking several times as his eyes water in the bright light. 

“It takes a while to adjust,” Tony says, and his voice is unnaturally subdued. 

“What is it?” Steve pins his hands over his ears. The din of sound blasts at him and he bends over about to vomit again. 

Tony whispers this time. “It might take a little while; your senses are much better than mine.”

Everything Tony says floats and bubbles up mixing and fusing together. He can’t make heads or tails of it. Tony continues to rub his shoulder and even that grates like a thousand pins and needles. It feels exactly like the moment right after the pod opened during the Project Rebirth experiment. Everything crashed into him like a wrecking ball to the chest. He manages to breathe slowly and purposefully as he did then. He peeks open his eyes and is rewarded with being able to see Tony.

“There we go,” Tony says. 

“We made it?” Steve murmurs. His ears ring.

Tony replies in the softest tones. “Yeah, welcome to the digital world.” Tony braces his hand against Steve’s back. The sandpaper feel dissipates and Steve leans into the touch needing the anchor. “Not exactly the internet though, more like Ultron’s twisted brain.”

“We made it.” Steve states it this time as if to convince himself.

“Of course we did with Cho’s cradle and my tinkering, we put together one supped up virtual reality interface.” Tony shifts away and Steve feels a loss he cannot parse. “Can you stand? I’d like to get out of the open, since we don’t exactly know where we are.”

Steve climbs to his feet or tries to and stumbles to his hands and knees. The tilt of the world and the input kills him. He gags again. The eruption of his senses reminds him of being on a spinning ride at Coney Island. He flails in helpless motions to find his footing but manages only to collapse into the piney grass again. The aroma is intoxicating, and he smothers himself in it. Perhaps if he could just breathe it in, become it, the recoiling in his belly would calm down. Surprisingly, it does work. He holds onto that, grasps it like a lifeline. Forcing himself up onto his arms again, he blinks away the tears in his eyes.

“How you doing, cowboy?” Tony asks. His voice is slightly louder. Gratefully, Steve notes it doesn’t pierce through his brain this time.

“Better,” Steve rasps. His ears ache and every now and again a spearing pain shoots through them, but it’s tolerable. “Better.”

“Can you manage to stand this time and not fall over?”

Steve cringes. “You’re sure no one can hear us on the outside?” The thought of having people listening in on him being sick to his stomach not only disgusts him but boils up that shame he always experienced as a child. 

“All of this is happening in a computer matrix. We’re completely sedated on the other side.” Tony grips him under the arm and hoists him to his feet. It causes a looping motion to the verdant green fields around him but generally he can settle the horizon stills himself. “The entrance is pretty much what Cho and I constructed so I think we’ve been successful.”

He remembers Tony explaining it to him. First Tony asked him if he’d like to sit down and watch a movie called _Inception_. Steve had been angry, pissed to the gills that during a worldwide crisis where an artificial intelligence of Tony’s design was literally holding the world hostage throwing the financial markets into turmoil, jets dropping out of the sky, not to mention the satellites wreaking havoc all over world he wanted to watch a movie. 

In a surprise move, Tony showed patience and asked again, “Cap, I need you to see this movie so I can explain fully what we can attempt.”

He watched the movie, riveted by it, and confused. How could they possibly use dream technology (that didn’t even exist) to ever interrogate Ultron’s mind. Later Tony explained it to him.

“It’s not dream technology. Nothing like that. But I wanted you to get the concept of infiltrating in a different way. Not physically but mentally.”

Steve had nodded, arms folded over his chest. His muscles tightened from tension and disuse. He’d felt nothing but worthless over the last few weeks as they tried to hunt down a faceless foe. 

“The problem we have right now is that the program of Ultron invaded the whole of the internet including the dark web. It’s in every nook and cranny. It’s infected both the internet and intranets. It’s been growing for the past few months unnoticed.”

“I noticed,” Steve muttered.

Tony grimaced at him and he shut up. He hadn’t, in fact, really noticed until the catastrophes started to occur on a weekly basis. He questioned what the hell was going on, but he had no inkling that a super virus named Ultron that they defeated months ago had been the culprit. None of them did. Ultron finally announced himself and ransomed peace of mind for power. The world took notice and put them, the Avengers, on notice. They didn’t have much time to clean up their mess before the United States Army stormed the gates. They had to capture and destroy Ultron or the very idea of the Avengers was dead in the water.

“If we take this concept and merge it with the idea of virtual reality, we could in theory enter Ultron’s virtual world and hunt it down.” Tony hopped around the open concept lounge and kitchen area of the Avengers compound. He’d probably been high on too many days with too much caffeine and too little sleep. 

“You can do that?” Natasha had been the one to ask. Vision, Sam, and Wanda stayed to the side, observing.

“I talked with Helen Cho. I think I can modify the cradle to allow an interface. We should be able to do it. Small neural implant should work. We can do it with one, possibly, two participants. Plant a virus, a worm and destroy him from within.” Tony tapped the counter when they all stayed stone faced. “Come on, you know this is the way to do it. We can’t chance Ultron going dormant again. There’s no way to scrub every corner of the internet and intranets all over the world to erase the program.”

“There’s no way we can’t assume a rogue nation hasn’t already downloaded Ultron to use for whatever nefarious plans it has,” Steve had pointed out. 

“I doubt anyone can do that. I can’t even get a handle on all of the code. It’s scattered, hidden, but-.” Tony picked up the remote and turned on the large screen television in the room. He used his phone to throw an image on the screen. “I think there’s a vulnerable spot in the code.”

“Can you just-.” Steve waved his hand. He wasn’t stupid but his life never revolved around technology. “You know, erase it.”

“There’s too may fail safes and redundancies. We need to go to the source. No one on Earth will be able to delete this, the one way to remove it is to root it out.” Tony showed what looked like a complex building schematic. It half reminded Steve of the arc reactor. “Ultron’s been a busy boy. He’s built shields and mazes, and defenses to keep himself safe.”

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. “But you think you can use virtual reality to stop him, erase him.” He hated using the pronoun him. It wasn’t a him or a her or anything in between. It was a demon. 

“It’s actually the only way. If we meet him where he’s vulnerable, then we have a chance. Otherwise it’s like a game of whack a mole.” 

“A what?” Wanda whispered to Vision. 

Tony barreled ahead not waiting for Vision to explain the concept. “Cho’s designing the chip that will be placed at the base of my skull. I’m designing the entrance and exit strategies. All I have to do is go and commit sonicide or whatever killing your AI child would be called. And bam, it’s all done.”

“Who said it was you going?” Steve had asked. That had led to one long conversation, battle, debate, and final resolution that they would both go since Cho thought that the maximum the cradle technology could handle would be two. 

Steve pushes away the memories and tries to center his concentration on Tony. He discovers that if he keeps his visual reference to things in close proximity the world spinning around him settles and quiets. Hopefully, he’ll adapt soon, otherwise the situation transforms into a strategic nightmare. The reasons he convinced the team it should be him alongside Tony highlighted his strategic skills. Being blind, deaf, and nauseous leads to a huge handicap.

“It’ll get better,” Tony says but his image shimmers in Steve’s vision. 

Steve straightens up, steadies himself on his own two feet. “It will.” He hopes he sounds believable. 

“What do you see?” Tony asks, testing him.

“Green grass, a knoll up ahead, toward a small brook and something else. I’m not sure.” The vividness of the virtual world scorches through his retinas like a beeline to his brain. 

“Once we get to the outer boundary of Ultron’s programming it won’t be so intense. What you’re not sure of is the exit Door. Or one of them. I programmed them in. This is the most obvious Door that there will be. Other Doors won’t be. We have to stick together so that you know what’s a Door and what’s an illusion.” Tony bends down and picks up a backpack.

Steve furrows his brows. “You brought a backpack?”

“You have what you need. It’s all in your brain. Right now, in this outer area, let’s call it the sanctum you can make anything in your head and make it real. Once we get into his programming, we have to have what we need. He’ll shut us down. We won’t be able to take anything else with us.” 

The backpack Tony’s slings on his shoulder is fairly pedestrian. It can’t possibly hold the armor. “You’re not bringing the armor?” Steve asks.

“It’s in here. I’ve been working on a nanotechnology armor. I have all the math worked out for it; all I have to do is manufacture it in the real world. That means-.” 

Steve interrupts him. “That means it exists here.”

Tony beams. “Sure does, Cap. Now how about you?”

Steve considers his best options; what gear does he need? As he runs through the list in his head, he feels the gentle weight of the shield appear on his back. Its weight has never been too much. When he doesn’t have it, he misses it like a severed limb. He rotates his shoulders and realizes he’s wearing the stealth uniform he once wore as a SHIELD agent. Tony’s snickering next to him. 

“What’s so funny?” Steve asks as his bag materializes in front of him. He’s been on missions before he knows how to pack for long drawn out journeys as well as warfare. 

“It’s incredible how vain even Captain America can be,” Tony says.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Steve replies but keeps his eyes keenly away from meeting Tony’s gaze. The flush of heat to his cheeks screams his embarrassment loud enough. He adjusts the straps on his holster for the shield. “Which way?”

Tony looks around and then shrugs. “Well, it doesn’t matter as long as we don’t go through the exit Door. Every which way should lead us to the Hub.”

“Well, let’s get to it. We’re burning daylight.” The landscape around them looks too perfect, every blade of grass, all the leaves in the trees – nothing blends together. “I think you should have consulted an artist when you designed the entrance.” He walks away from the Door. Keeping the Door directly behind him must be the best strategy, but he doesn’t know for sure. It’s not like he’s spent much time playing video games.

“Why?”

“Hmm?” Maybe they should have called on Clint to be Tony’s second. He has kids; he probably knows all about games.

“Why an artist?”

Steve curls his lips. “Well, everything’s a little too perfect. Like hyper-realistic. They said that Pixar tried to do something like that with the animation of people. Giving them pores and fine hairs on their faces and it turned out that audiences found it really creepy.”

“I thought you, as a perfectionist, would love this,” Tony says as he spreads his arms.

“I’m not a perfectionist.” He sees the next hill. The world remains steady, not floating or rolling. 

“You are. You just hate to admit it.” Tony trudges next to him. He has a phone in his hands and Steve indicates it.

“What good is that going to do? We’re actually in a computer.”

“Not much, actually. It’s a crutch. I like to think I still have access to Friday.” Tony tucks it back in his pocket. He’s wearing a dark t-shirt, jeans, boots, and a flannel shirt. That last piece dumbfounds him. The number of times Tony’s accused Steve of being an old man in his flannels could fill a piggy bank with coins. 

“You miss JARVIS,” Steve says as they ascend a hill.

“Yeah. Vision is great, don’t get me wrong, but JARVIS – JARVIS was my baby. I spent hours, hundreds of hours on his code.” Tony grins. “And actually, we’re not in the computer, the computer is in us.”

He’s not wrong. In order for the mission to work, Tony devised a micro-chip that would sync with the cradle. Cho used the micro-chip to fabricate vibranium neurological interfaces within their craniums. At the base of their skulls, she implanted the devices that would link them to the cradle which would then connect with the internet. Tony wrote the code that ensured that their consciousness shuttled to the closest input point to find Ultron’s base code. 

“He’ll never suspect that we’re coming in after him,” Tony had said. He relished the idea. Sometimes Steve wanted to punch that arrogant smirk off his face. “He expects an outside attack, not one from within.”

“Why can’t we do an Independence Day on him?” Sam had asked.

“You’ve been talking to the kid too much with your pop culture references. We can’t just download a virus on a killer AI who has control of the entire world right now. Trust me, this is the best way.”

They had all looked to Steve. Every single person turned to silently ask him should they believe Tony, should they trust him after all Ultron had been Tony’s (and Bruce’s) creation. Even Vision had turned away from his creator and questioned Steve without speaking at all. 

“Let me talk to Tony privately, first.”

It seems like a million years ago now, but it had only been a few desperate weeks. A few weeks of the world descending into hell, a few weeks of pleading calls for them to do something about it, a few weeks of Secretary Ross promising them that there would be serious consequences to their actions. They have one shot to get this right. 

Steve lets the memories fade and asks Tony, “How will we know when we entered into the Ultron perimeter?”

“The outer rim might be more difficult to discern than when we get closer in, but I suspect I’ll recognize it,” Tony assures him, but keeps mum about what exactly that means.

Steve bites back his words, his questions. They’ve come to a mutual détente. It’s easier this way. They worked well together before Ultron, but Tony’s creation decimated their fragile friendship and it had only started to rebuild but Steve had to tear it away again. That private talk nearly exploded any hope they had, but Tony’s sense of right had prevailed, something that Steve counted on – which had been completely unfair. Emotional manipulation never had been his forte. Now they are companions on a journey to save the world – a journey taking place inside their heads. And Steve thought fighting a man with a red skull face had been the strangest thing he’d ever encounter. 

In the end, Steve allows Tony to have his secrets. He deserves to have whatever he wants. Steve knows heartbreak. He’s mourned a world before, so letting Tony walk the path ahead of him, letting him lead and Steve follow is the least he can do at this juncture. Later, after all is said and done and they’re standing in front of Ross to accept whatever reprimand or punishment the world decides might be their due because of Ultron, Steve plans to stand with Tony. He won’t let him down again.

“That’s weird.” Tony stops in front of him.

Steve realizes he’s been staring at his boots, how he marches one foot in front of the other. He peers up to find out what’s happening only to see a massive dark storm cloud on the horizon. “A storm?” 

“I didn’t program that in the entrance way at all,” Tony says. “That’s not from my program.”

“Could it be a glitch?” Steve asks. He might not be savvy on all the technical ins and outs of modern day life, but he knows glitches. 

“No, that’s too deliberate to be a glitch.” Tony stays stock still. “It’s not a glitch, it’s not an error of the program. It’s a premeditated code creating that storm.”

“So that means?” Steve spins on his heels, trying to ignore the momentary vertigo. He spots the exit Door in the distance – but there’s something terribly wrong with it. “Tony? Tony!” He points to the Door. It’s disintegrating, pixelating into fragments.

“That shouldn’t happen, that can’t happen.” Tony rushes toward it, but then a swooping caw fills the air. 

A cold blast hits them and then hail rains down on them, pelleting and bruising. Steve rips the shield off his back and hauls Tony toward him. Arms linked; they race for the cover of the trees. An angry cry fills the air threatening to burst Steve’s eardrums. He stumbles but Tony forces him to stay upright. They make it to the tree line as the Door in the distance completely fades. 

Tony tucks his hands under his armpits. They are both soaked to the bone and the wind whipping through the thin forest freezes. “That shouldn’t have happened. There’s no way he knows.”

“He’s your creation, Tony. He knows,” Steve says and part of him crumples. Not outside, Steve never permits anyone to see how crippling the battle can be. As Captain America, it’s his job to maintain a certain stoic and positive outlook. The thing is – it’s a façade that’s getting harder and harder to preserve, especially in Tony’s presence. 

“Fuck,” Tony says and clasps his hands over his eyes. “I shouldn’t have come-.”

“You’re not endangering the mission and stop with the pop culture references,” Steve reminds him.

That jerks a smile on the edge of Tony’s mouth. Steve finds he likes that he’s able to elicit such a response. “You got that reference. I’m proud of you, Cap.”

“Steve. You never call me, Steve.” It’s wrong to bring up such a petty grievance when their whole plan is hell bent on ripping itself apart. He finds he doesn’t care. He wants to throw that out into the wind and watch it get torn into shreds by Tony.

Instead, Tony says, “Oh. I just-. Okay, Steve.”

Steve narrows his eyes at Tony but says nothing about it in return. He pulls Tony back into the small, wooded area as if it will lend cover to prying artificial intelligence. “I think we stick with the plan. We can’t get out of here, we have to get to the inner Hub to exit.”

The wind screams in an attempt to drown out Tony. He nods. “I think so.” He squints his eyes as he examines the landscape around him. “Pretty sure we have to get over that rise in order to get to the outer rim and then the inner rims.”

“How many?” Steve yells.

“How many what?” The wind grows in intensity. 

“Probably more than we planned.” Tony screws up his face in a disgruntled expression; a telltale sign he’s internally angry with himself for not adjusting for every scenario.

“You couldn’t have known,” Steve says as the flying debris smacks him hard in the chest.

“Yes, I could. I chose not to acknowledge it.” Tony throws up his hands. “Doesn’t matter.”

“No, it doesn’t. We stay on mission. You programmed in more Doors, right? We use those to exit.”

“They won’t be as easy,” Tony warns.

Steve agrees though he hasn’t a clue why one Door would be easier than another Door to use. Right now, he needs Tony on his side and thinking beyond the catastrophic failure of the entrance. They have to get moving and toward the outer rim.

“Okay, we have to get over the rise, then,” Tony says and points again.

A swooshing wind barrels into them, shoving them both to their backs. Steve is the first to recover and he crawls over to Tony, hooks a hand under his arm and heaves them both to their feet. He ignores the creeping sensation of the world fragmenting around them, each wind gust peeling back layers that reveals only a void of nothingness and darkness beyond. Ultron has an outer rim of existence; they just need to get to it.

Bent by the wind, they slog from the cover of the trees to the open plains and the rise. The hail crashes down but the shield protects them. Steve has no issue holding the shield in place, thankfully the serum gives him the fortitude and endurance he needs. The ground beneath them gets sloppy with mud and hail as it defies all logic and forms sleets of ice. Both of them are wearing boots and Tony’s pulled out a gauntlet. He isn’t using it, yet, but it’s a good defense if they need it. 

By the time they get to foot of the rise, the sheets of ice have turned into an icy rushing river. Already it’s over Steve’s ankles. They don’t have a lot of time and he desperately hopes that beyond the ridge they can find shelter away from Ultron’s attacks. 

Tony lifts his gauntlet and aims, a repelling cable shoots out and lands precisely at the top of the ridge. “Can you get us up?

“Can’t you fly?” Steve shouts over the gale force winds.

“Don’t want to give away all of my secrets,” Tony says, pushing away the hair plastered to his face. “Doing this was risky enough.”

Steve doesn’t mention that Ultron probably already knows. He accepts Tony’s explanation and tugs on the cable. It’s strong and will hold for the climb. It’s not a steep rise, but the wind works against them, so they need the rope as a guide if not for anything else. He grapples to get Tony leashed to him. They mutually and silently decide it’s for the best if they each climb up individually. Tony goes first, using the rope to hoist himself up the slippery surface. Steve spots him, ensuring there’s no accident. His eyes have adjusted to the weirdness – the perfect perspective, the finite details. His brain still scrambles to make sense of it, but he can ram through the nausea. He did it enough as a young man. 

Once Tony is halfway up the rise, Steve gathers the cable that Tony let loose from his gauntlet and begins. He has a rope in his backpack, but urgency stops him from digging it out. He watches Tony’s footing, confirming his stable ascent. He doesn’t want to disturb Tony’s progress, so he waits every few feet. The storm makes it impossible for them to speak for which Steve is thankful. Right now, he doesn’t want to hear the impossibility of their mission from Tony. Sometimes Tony knows too much. 

The great caw screeches through the sky again and Steve scans the sky expecting to see a massive monster. What he sees is a murder of crows heading for them. The winds have no effect on the birds at all, their shrieks carrying over the thunderous roar. He sees thousands of birds. It’s impossible for him to warn Tony since the din of the gusts pick up again sounding like a freight train. He’s smart enough to identify the potential tornado targeted for them, but it’s not bothering the birds at all. The swarm flies closer and Steve takes this as a warning to get the hell out of there. He picks up his speed and hurries up the hill, throwing Tony off kilter. 

In a jumble of arms and legs, Tony tumbles down the hill. The muddy ground splashes over him and he collides with Steve. Luckily, Steve’s able to keep his footing and scoop up Tony with one hand. It means he has to leave the shield on his back; they have no defenses except for the gauntlet.

Tony pants in Steve’s arm but manages to right himself. Crackles of thunder streak the sky and Steve smells the ozone as lightning splits the gray clouds with brilliant blue-white flashes. It harkens back Thor commanding the lightning. For a second, Steve misses the god of thunder, but there’s no time for sentimentality. With Tony tucked under his arm, Steve fights for purchase as lightning arcs across the sky. 

Steve clenches his teeth and with one last colossal heave makes the rise of the hill. The stones and mud slosh beneath them, but they succeeded. Steve turns his attention to the landscape beyond the entrance and gasps.

“That’s-.”

“Barton’s farm,” Tony supplies.

Before them serene and beautiful, the farmlands owned by Clint Barton spread out. The raging storm is a thing of the past – or at least a thing behind them. Pastoral and peaceful, the sun shines and the rows of corn wave in the gentle breeze in front of them. He sees the house, rustic and wholesome with its large porch. He spots the tractor Tony once fixed moving through an empty field with a tiller hooked up to the back. 

Steve peers over his shoulder. The rain and hail beat and punish the landscape – the place that Tony created for them to enter into Ultron’s domain. In front of them is something different, something odd and disturbing in its tranquility. “What is this place?”

“Welcome to the outer rim.” Tony starts down the path to the house before Steve grabs his collar and jerks him back. 

“We need a plan.” Steve relaxes but still yanks Tony over to a thicket of wildflowers and weeds. “Why the hell is the outer rim of Ultron’s consciousness Barton’s farm?”  
Tony flinches and Steve backs off. He hates the idea of intimidating anyone (well, not honest to goodness villains); he’s not a bully. He drops Tony’s wrist and exhales heavily and audibly. “Please tell me why the outer rim looks just like Barton’s farm.”

At this, Tony thins his lips in a tight line, then he snorts and drops his head. Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, his wet hair dripping onto the soft carpet of grass, Tony says, “Because I have dossiers.” He meets Steve’s gaze. “On all the Avengers. I have dossiers that contain everything I know about the team members, and probably a little I don’t know, not aware of that is.”

“What?” Steve hisses. He fists his hands at his side. “Please explain.”

“Ultron knows everything I know because he had access to JARVIS before we knew he was an evil doom AI. Well, I had dossiers, files of information on all the team members. I kept accumulating it.”

“But Ultron and JARVIS separated long before we knew about Barton’s farm,” Steve says and points in the direction of the house. “How?”

“Simple, the SHIELD files, the ones you and Nat dropped onto the internet? Well, I had that and some of the bugged stuff I found – all of it JARVIS saved, sorted, analyzed. JARVIS, my man, would have put it in the correct dossier. And since Fury knew about the farm-.”

“But that was a data dump, Fury’s smarter than that,” Steve says. “He wouldn’t have had something like that on the SHIELD servers.”

“Well it’s that or Ultron can read our minds in here.” Tony turns and looks back to the dark clouds in the entrance area. “And if that’s true then we are royally screwed.”

CHAPTER 2  
**INTERLUDE**  
“What the hell just happened?” Sam asks as he watches Doctor Cho scurry between the two gurneys.

“I’m not sure,” Cho answers. She set up a series of monitors in the room. Wires crisscross between the beds and the occupants.

“Are they going to be okay?” Sam tightens his grip as he folds his arms around himself. He always used to do it as a child when frightened. His dad would softly pull his arms down and embrace him, hold him until the fear passed. Now, the fear rachets up.

The monitors had wailed in protest as both Steve and Tony experienced increased heart rates, blood pressures, and oxygen use. At one point, the situation disintegrated, and Cho strapped on a nasal cannula for Stark to offer him straight oxygen. Thankfully, things settled down and their vitals went back to normal. 

“It looks like they experienced something out of the ordinary in the interface.” Natasha peeks in the room. She left to observe the readouts from Friday. The AI had been giving them updates throughout the integration and the smooth transition into the virtual world, but Natasha wanted to see the source material so she’d snuck out to spend time in the workshop which was directly under the medical ward at the main building of the compound.

She stands at the door, her usually calm features slightly vexed.

“What does that mean exactly?”

“I’m not sure, but I think whatever they face in there is going to have a reaction out here,” Natasha answers. She’s leaning against the doorframe as if the weight of her words is too much of a burden.

“How bad could it get?” Sam asks.

She shakes her head. “I have no idea.”

**oOo**

Happy is not the word Steve would use when Tony decides the best plan of action is just to march down to the farm and say hello. As Steve warned him, this isn’t like playing house. Ultron is using the information on Barton – however he found it – to lure them in for some specific purpose.

“And what would that be?” Tony had snapped. “Lull us into hanging around and helping harvest the corn?”

“It has to be something. This is Ultron’s outer rim. You said it yourself before we even attempted this little mission, that Ultron’s devious and that he’s going to play games with us. This is a game, Tony, a game.”

“And I love to play games, so let’s get at it, Cap.” Steve frowns at the use of his title but follows Tony down the steep hill toward the farm. Tony’s speaking as he finds a pathway. “These are constructs from Ultron. That means don’t expect Clint to act like himself. This Clint is what Ultron perceives as the Clint from the information gathered.”

“That’s tricky,” Steve replies, deciding to go with the flow rather than against it. “Ultron might have more working knowledge than we do in some cases.”

“He might, but we know Clint and we know Ultron. I think that gives us the upper hand.”

Steve’s not so sure, but he doesn’t express his doubts. With a brief peer at the ridge behind them, Steve focuses on the task ahead. Get to the Hub, get rid of Ultron, find the exit Door. “So, this construct of Clint, will Ultron be privy to everything that happens?”

“Depends,” Tony says. “Say you have a game, like SIMS or Minecraft. Does the creator know every action that happens, probably but not the way you expect. Say you go to work in the morning, like you have a regular job. Every morning you see the same people on the subway. You know they are there, but you know little about them. Kind of the same deal – here Ultron knows we’re here; is he aware of every action and reaction? I doubt it. Remember he’s extending himself over a large amount of data throughout the world, that’s even a lot to handle for him.”

“He can also use the whole of the internet to shore up anywhere he thinks he’s vulnerable and can spy on us here if he uses his resources,” Steve says.

“True. But Ultron remember is my dreamed up child,” Tony says and there’s a bit of smugness in his voice that irritates Steve. Tony reads Steve’s stiff body language easily enough. He puts up a hand. “That means that he’s willing to let things play out because he’s curious. We just have to make sure we don’t give away the farm – pun intended – as we play his game.”

“This is not going to be easy,” Steve mutters. He doesn’t admit out loud that it’s about as clear as mud but contends privately that they’re in Ultron’s brain and not the other way around. He hopes.

As they step down onto the homestead, the smell of honeysuckle floats in the air. It tightens his chest a little but he figures it’s the tension. The idea that he can smell and see and hear and feel in this place is a little disconcerting. _Outside of the entrance area within the rims of Ultron’s existence the fractals are less complex leading to the hyper-realism tapped down to a more realistic vibe._ He furrows his brows – he knows nothing about fractals.

“What are fractals?” Steve asks in a low voice.

“Huh, I was just thinking about that. Fractals are complex patterns that use the same shapes over and over again to create an intricate design. I used a pattern similar to fractals in order to create the reality of the entrance. Cool, you know about that.” He slaps Steve on the shoulder and heads toward the house.

“Well, that’s not good,” Steve says with his hands on his hips. There’s nothing to be done about it now. It might not repeat itself. 

As they cross the open area near the barn, a child runs out of the house and waves to them. It’s Lila and she races to them as if they’re long lost relatives. Her hair is tied up into a ponytail and she’s wearing fingerless gloves, thick leather vembraces, and a matching vest.

“You got here right on time. We’re about to have a picnic in the field out back.” 

“You were expecting us?” Steve asks and eyes Tony.

“Well, Dad says that now that you know about us, we can expect you to pop in at any time.” Her expression goes blank for a good thirty seconds and it’s freakishly unsettling, but then she smiles at them and hops off toward the fields.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t find that a tad bit strange,” Steve asks.

“I find a lot of things strange, Cap. But I think this is just Ultron testing us.” Tony adjusts the bag on his shoulder and follows Lila. Steve notices how he clenches his fist around the handle of the bag, and he hasn’t removed the gauntlet yet. He’s on alert.

Steve trails behind him, scanning the horizon for anything untoward, but what would that be in a virtual reality existence? Ultron is brilliant Steve must remember that, he knows what Tony knows and probably more because of his vast control of the internet. The AI would hide as much of his wicked plans as possible, in the best places possible – like a family having a picnic out in the fields.

Hurrying along, Steve jogs to meet up with Tony. Tony tentatively places his bag near the corner of the house and smiles when Clint walks up toward them. There’s a picnic table in what looks like a field that needs to be harvested for hay. Laura waves to them but doesn’t leave her task at the table. Clint’s in full Avengers’ team regalia. 

“What up with this? Thought you retired?” Tony says.

Steve recognizes that Tony’s testing Ultron, seeing how much he knows and how much he’s guessing at – since Hawkeye’s officially retired it and Ultron seems to have missed that cue it’s hopeful that he doesn’t know everything. 

“Yep,” Clint says but his answers halting. He looks away and then back at them. “Are you here to get away from the big bad?”

Steve jumps in to answer, “Why? Are you offering safe haven?”

Clint winks at him. “Now why wouldn’t I?”

Steve snorts but Tony elbows him in the gut. Clearing his throat, he says, “Can’t two team mates just visit a friend?” 

Clint picks up his bow. “We’re just doing some target practice. Wanna join in?” Lila comes up with her own bow and quiver full of arrows. 

“Not really,” Steve says. “We’ll just watch. From here.” He stays put near the house and grabs Tony to keep him planted in place. 

Clint salutes them and says, “Have it your way.”

Once Clint and his daughter are out of sight, Steve turns to Tony and yanks him around the corner of the house. “Can he hear us?”

“Who? Clint?”

“Clint. Ultron. Whomever.”

Tony considers the questions and then shrugs. “I’m not 100% sure. If Ultron set this up as a virtual world where the players interact independently, then the possibility is that he doesn’t have complete omnipotent presence.”

“And if he didn’t?” Steve realizes he’s still grasping Tony’s wrist. He drops it.

“If he didn’t, then he can hear and see everything. I doubt that because he didn’t know about Clint being retired,” Tony says. He scratches at the back of his neck. It’s a tell that Tony does when he’s uncomfortable with a riddle or a problem. “But he can learn from his mistakes.”

“So, he might be more apt to listen in.”

“But remember, Ultron likes to play with his food. He might be straightforward most of the time, but why the hell did he keep Nat locked up in Sokovia, because he wanted to play with his food.” He nods to himself as if he’s having an internal argument.

“That’s a nasty way to put it,” Steve comments. “But it’s probably right. Let’s keep what we know under wraps as much as possible.”

“Roger that,” Tony says but then giggles at his own joke. Steve only rolls his eyes. Tony pats Steve on the arm. “Let’s go play the happy couple now.”

For a second, Steve thinks that Tony might wrap his arm around him and saunter back to the picnic area. When he doesn’t a deep disappointment sinks through Steve and he clears it away by coughing and blinking. Tony turns to investigate but Steve only begs off.

“The senses - still getting used to it.”

Tony lifts his chin in understanding. “It’ll get better.”

“Before, before you go,” Steve starts. “Hmm.”

“Spit it out, Cap.” 

There’s that Cap again and the ball drops further in his gut. There was a time when Ultron first attacked and they had to find their way to Clint’s farm as safe refuge, that they almost ended up sharing rooms. Tony had stared at Steve, frozen as Laura announced that they had one guest bedroom, the kids would double up, but that meant someone had to sleep on the couch and the others had to double up. Steve thought for sure that Banner and Natasha would bunk together. That left Thor, Tony, and Steve. Thor was too massive to share a bed, so it only seemed logical that he take the wide sectional in the den while Steve and Tony shared the small full sized bed. That’s not what happened. 

Natasha volunteered for the couch. Somehow or another even with Tony gazing intently at him, Steve ended up with Thor – which was utterly ridiculous. They couldn’t even fit on the bed together. He barely slept that night, but it hadn’t been because of the lack of space, but the sleeping arrangements. He never admitted it to anyone, but every once in a while, Natasha would glance at him with that knowing look in her eyes. Sometimes he wanted to know what she knew because he hadn’t a clue. 

Clint greets them with a stiff wave and then goes back to working with Lila and target practice. Off in the distance Laura is preparing a meal with her two sons in the fields. She keeps asking about hot dogs, but Steve doesn’t see a grill or anywhere to cook them. The air is fresh and sweet, the temperature not to hot and with a gentle breeze. The sun blurs the edge of the horizon. It’s idyllic in a sinister way that Steve can’t put his finger on. 

He leans into Tony and whispers, “It’s too perfect.”

Tony nods and walks over to Clint. “Can I give it a shot?” He reaches for the bow. 

Clint eyes the gauntlet on Tony’s right hand. “Not sure you can shoot with that thing on. Not sure you can have a hot dog, either.” He smirks.

“Not sure I want a hot dog.” Tony waits, his left hand outstretched. This is a test. Whether Ultron’s constructs will back down. If Ultron follows the rules of his own game, then Clint should act as he would in the real world. Ultron knows enough about Clint. He knows what Tony had in those dossiers – whatever that might be. 

Clint pauses. The air chills in response. Steve glances over his shoulder to the entrance portal area and that’s completely disappeared. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t escape that way since it’s now been replaced with a field of corn. When Steve looks back all the constructs are paused. Laura has her hand on a pitcher of lemonade. Lila has her bow pulled back (she has good form – is that something that Ultron is hypothesizing or does Tony know about her abilities). Both the Barton boys are frozen in the field with a ball in the air between them. The sound of the birds twists into a high pitched buzzing noise like a thousand locusts descending.

“Tony?”

“A glitch. Give it a minute.” Tony holds his gauntleted hand down and waits.

Abruptly, Clint laughs and the whole scene begins to move again. It’s so dizzyingly sudden that Steve tastes bile at the back of his throat. He swallows it down with a cringe. 

“Your funeral, right boss man?” Clint winks at Steve and then hands the bow and the quiver over to Tony. “Give it your best shot.”

Tony grips the bow and puts the quiver of arrows at his knee. All the constructs of the Barton family turn to watch, assessing Tony’s skill with a bow. This isn’t a necessary skill, especially since the gauntlet is on display. It’s obvious that Tony wanted the gauntlet shown to warn off Ultron. But what damage could he do in a virtual reality. _Every game has rules, every program has rules that cannot be broken, and therefore the gauntlet should work because Ultron set the rules. It worked before; it will work again._

Steve jerks at the intrusion in his head. Tony turns to him as he’s drawing back the string. “You okay there, Cap?”

Steve only nods and rubs at the back of his neck. That’s where the small chip is that connects him remotely with the cradle. It took some time for Cho to work with Steve’s serum chemistry in order to override it, but it worked. Yet maybe it worked too well. He studies Tony. He needs to confess what’s happening. 

He knows what happens when he doesn’t come clean. 

He’d asked the team to allow him to speak to Tony privately before the mission to infiltrate Ultron’s brain. The team slowly left with Natasha lingering with a concerned look on her face. Steve nodded to her and she agreed silently. After all, she knew what he was about to confess. 

“Let’s take a walk,” Steve had said. He needed the time to summon his courage. When he thinks back on it, it embarrasses him. A super soldier, Captain America, feared the worst. 

“Oh, the let’s take a walk speech,” Tony had said, chagrin on his face. “What exactly do you want to break to me, Steve?”

“Let’s just walk,” he replied, showing Tony to the door that led out to the wide expanse of land around the compound. They stepped from the main building, to the sweeping ramp that led to the well-manicured lawn. He silently directed Tony toward the path that led to the duck pond. Why they called it that, Steve hadn’t figured out. There were never any ducks around it. 

He shoved his hands in his pockets to stop from clenching them. “I wanted to tell you something, Tony. Something I learned right before the fall of SHIELD.”

“That was some time ago,” Tony said and kept his sights on the water. Ripples upset the surface of the pristine lake; it wasn’t anything but the wind touching it’s surface. 

“Yeah, it was, and I should have said something sooner. I can list the excuses. I wanted to find him first, I wanted to see confirmation of the information. Anything, but none of it really had mattered. Maybe part of me just didn’t want to believe it.” Steve wished there were ducks on the lake. As a kid he never got to experience nature, being a city boy and a sickly one at that. He liked the lake. 

“You want to tell me what you’re being so cryptic about?” Tony had said. He focused on Steve, his eyes slightly squinting because of the angle of the sun.

With a breath, Steve said, “Your parents weren’t in an accident. They were killed by a Hydra agent and very likely that Hydra agent was my best friend Bucky as the Winter Soldier.” He was a coward then, instead of looking at Tony to see his reaction, he gazed out into the calming waters of the lake.

“What?” Tony’s hand touched his shoulder. “What did you just say?”

“I saw a video that implied, strongly, that Bucky was involved in your parents’ deaths. It was when Nat and I found Zola and the data banks.” Steve forced his eyes to land on Tony then, because he deserved the disdain, the hatred, the disappointment. What he found had been profound disbelief and pain.

Never had an injury in all his days of battle hurt more than the expression on Tony’s face. The wound grew deep and thick between them. Wounds bleeding out are the ones that are difficult to manage. The slow drip of wounds over years are not difficult to manage, they are impossible. The chronic infestation of pain lays bare the vulnerabilities of the spirit and soul. Steve knew at that moment he’d drawn his dagger and carved his name on Tony’s soul forever rescinding any hope of being close to him at all.

“Cap?”

Steve shakes himself out of the memory and his stupor of self-pity. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” He smiles as Clint stares at him. Steve blanks out his mind by saying the Rosary as his mother taught him. He might not always believe what the Church preached, but at least the chanting helped when he needed to protect himself in this situation. 

“Here we go, Barton.” Tony snorts. “Watch this.” He lets loose the arrow and it hits its target with the thud – dead center. Steve frowns. He’s never seen Tony do that before and he’s watched the man play darts enough. 

What happened to rules? 

Tony gives the bow back to Clint. “Can you do better?”

Clint takes it as a challenge and over the next hour they trade the bow back and forth, slamming the target in the center repeatedly. It’s almost like watching someone play themselves at chess. Steve drifts away from the contest and toward the house, searching the horizon of corn fields for the next level of the rims. He remembers Tony going over the details of what they were able to glean regarding Ultron’s existence in the internet.

“He’s like a spider sitting at the center of a web,” Tony had said. “We need to traverse the web lightly, taking each thread of the weave carefully, until we make the center – or the Hub.”

“How will we be able to get from one layer to the next?” Steve had asked. It had only been a few days since he’d confessed his sin to Tony. They were barely on speaking terms.

“Each Passage will have a clue. I wrote the entrance so that I can see the passage into the outer rim. Each successive rim or layer will have a clue that we’ll have to find. Something will be wrong. No, that’s not it. Something with be transitional. I suspect that Ultron will use each layer to try and learn from us as well as stop us.”

“So, it’s like a video game, each level gets more difficult,” Clint had said.

“Exactly.”

“But how do we find the transition?”

“The Passage may not be distinct, but it will there. It might be a visual queue, an auditory one. It can even be an action,” Tony said.

“This is sounding more and more like different levels of Hell,” Steve had muttered. 

Tony had clapped him on the back and leaned into whisper, “Welcome to my life, Cap.”

The faster they find the Passage in each level or rim, the better as far as Steve is concerned. He doesn’t want to play games; he wants to get the job done and get on with confronting Ross. They don’t have time for this hogwash and playing games. He stalks back to Tony and Clint ready to confront him when he finds himself standing in the middle of a bedroom with Tony. There’s a full bed with a light rose colored comforter. Lace curtains blow in the deep summer night air. It’s fully dark outside.

“Shit! What just happened?” Steve says.

“The game and the rules shifted. Ultron learned something and he rewrote part of the rim,” Tony answers. He goes to the window and peers out. “We’re still on Clint’s farm. No telling if it’s the same day or not.”

“Same day? How the hell long have we been in here?”

“Cool your jets, Cap,” Tony says and tugs the curtain back in place. “Not long at all. What I mean by same day is what day Ultron decides it is for us in here. Is it the same day or did he backtrack from when the whole team was here?”

“Ultron doesn’t know the whole team was here. Or at least he’s not supposed to know,” Steve says. He had been thinking about the first time they visited Barton’s family earlier. “Do you think he can read our minds? Retrieve the data?” He’d asked it before, but he needs the answer.

Tony scrunches up his face as if he enmeshed in trying to figure out a mathematical anomaly and maybe it’s that – Steve doesn’t know. Tony rakes his hands through his hair.  
“It would mean he can access our neurons and I don’t think that’s possible. The cradle uses vibranium, sure, but also a biomatrix. He can’t read neurons.”

“Wanda could.” 

“She could but she never did the tango in Clint’s head.”

That left them with little knowledge of what exactly they face. “Well, at least we know it isn’t when we were here before.” Steve slides off the shield and sets his bag on the floor with it. He notes that Tony’s backpack is missing. 

“How do you figure?” 

“Well, for one thing, Thor and I shared a room.”

“Ah. I suppose that might place this time-,” Tony says. “Shit. My backpack.”

“I’ll get it when I’m sure the rest of the family is asleep. Do we even sleep here?” This place gives him a headache, even with the serum.

Tony flexes his still gauntleted hand. “Time moves differently in here. We’ll need to sleep. We’ll need to eat. It’s all a simulation, but we need to do it. Our avatars need it, just like in a game.” He sits on the bed. “We can’t lose that backpack.”

“I’ll get it. Don’t worry,” Steve says. To change the subject and to ensure that Tony’s working on a different problem, he adds, “Do you have any idea where the Passage is going to be to get to the next rim?”

“Not yet. It hasn’t been anything visual. I tested Barton to see if it was something to do with him and he – it can’t be. He glitches too much. Ultron’s constantly having to reboot him. Not really, but he isn’t it.” Tony sighs. “This might take longer than we hoped.”

“But we have all the time in the world, right? It isn’t like a ton of time is passing on the outside.” 

“We can live a whole lifetime in here and it will be like an hour out there,” Tony says. “At least that’s a close approximation I’m not sure. I didn’t do the math.”

Steve barks out laughter. “Really? You didn’t do the math?”

“I didn’t see you trying,” Tony snaps. He sags with his shoulders slumping. “Sorry. No. I can do it if it’s necessary. But I figured the best part of this was that we don’t have to worry about taking our time to get it done. Of course, if the interface degrades that’s another story.”

“Wait! What?” The room blinks in and out for a minute and then Steve’s on his hands and knees with Tony hunched over him, telling him to breathe. “What? What happened?”

“I think I surprised you and the whole fake world freaked your brain again.”

“And the fact that our interface might degrade at any minute,” Steve hisses. It’s hard enough to keep his mind fixed on the reality of the surrounding virtual world. The idea that their interface might degrade and end the mission terrifies him. If Ultron gets anymore powerful, then the world may be thrown back into the Dark Ages. “The degradation, what does it mean?” Steve straightens and gets to his feet, ignoring the helping hand from Tony.

“It means that the interface might get leaky. And then for sure the bastard will be able to infiltrate our minds, not to read them, but to damage them.” Tony states the last part slowly and with purpose, eying Steve as if he wants to make sure that another phase out of the virtual world isn’t imminent. 

Steve hangs his head. “This mission is far more rife with dangers than we first thought.”

“It’s rifer. But who says rifer? Still with more rife, sounds better.” Tony mumbles and then peeks out the window again as he paces the room. “We need that backpack.”

“Do you think everyone else is asleep or whatever constructs do when it’s night?” Steve asks.

“Not sure. Ultron’s having trouble keeping up with the bit of information he’s already received from the fact that Barton’s retired to the fact that Wanda’s a full fledged Avenger now.” He puts his hands up to ward off Steve’s protests. “I had to figure out how far his knowledge went or didn’t go. He knows something but not all. That’s good for us. He’s probably shut down the simulation with respect to the constructs right now because he has to update them.”

“Okay, I’ll go now.” Steve swings the shield onto his back. 

“I left it-.”

“I know.” Steve twists open the door and slips out. 

The dark hallway greets him. The silence deepens unnaturally. He hears every breath, the pump of his heart in his ears, the swallow of his throat. His footfalls thunder in the quietude. It’s not like a silence in the real world; the real world hums. The din of humans clatters in the background. It took Steve ages to get used to sleeping in the forest when he fought in WWII because the distant ring of humanity had been absent. 

Ultron may understand the construction of civilization, probably had millions of facts and figures at his disposal, but he never lived and breathed life. He’d only experienced it second hand – maybe that was why he longed to make a living body. Being human means living the vulgarities of life from the pesky insects buzzing around your head in the summer to the song of crickets during the long summer days. The artificial brilliance of Ultron’s mind limits his scope of the real human existence.

Steve pauses to listen, but again nothing answers him. He steps down the staircase with caution, though. Walking through the living room, he opens the front door and stands on the porch. The eerie silence unsettles him. The corn growing on tall stalks remains still and frozen as if Ultron expects no one to explore this area. Leaving the porch, he goes to the side of the house to retrieve the backpack. 

It’s not there.

He scans the area – he swore Tony left it here, but Steve cut him off. Maybe he’d moved it to somewhere on the porch or near the picnic table or target or even in the house. His own arrogance would be his undoing. 

A crackle alerts Steve to someone behind him. He turns and Clint stands there with the backpack hanging from a single finger.

“Looking for this?”

Something wrong about Clint unbalances Steve. The archer steps into the moonlight, except he’s not an archer anymore. There are swords crossed on his back instead of a quiver. Steve steadies his response. He needs to pass this Ultron test. 

“Yes. Tony must have dropped it when he first came by to visit you and the family.” Steve tries to appeal to that side of Ultron that longs to be human, be seen as human. 

“But what’s inside?” Clint’s hair is shaved on the sides of his head. “Did Tony invent a new suit that he can shove in a standard backpack?”

“Not sure. You know how Tony is.”

Clint looks from the bag to Steve. His eyes flash red. That was not the right answer. Clint slings the bag over his shoulder, his eyes challenge Steve. “Well, my dear Captain – man out of time – tell me how you’re prepared to handle a dose of my reality?”

The sword swings downward, sluicing through the air. The sound of it cuts out the silence. It’s a jagged thing and Steve barely has time to pull the shield from his back and block the vicious attack. Using the shield as his weapon and his defense Steve attempts to gain ground on the Ultron construct of Clint. Unfortunately, Steve realizes too late that the only thing he can control in this world, is his reactions to it. Assuming the world around him remains stable and defined weakens his ability to protect himself. 

The slice of Clint’s sword slashes through the air as Steve throws up the shield to thwart it. He stumbles and falls back as the ground beneath him shifts, changing from level grass to a steep drop off of gravel. Luckily, he recovers and only counts a few scrapes as his reward. Clint advances.

“I wonder man out of time, if I kill you here in my world, what happens to you out there?”

Steve snarls, “I don’t intend to find out.” 

It’s something that the team discussed prior to the mission. Cho expressed concerns, pointing to the weaknesses in the cradle technology, psychological stress factors, and how the reaction of the interface worked. Tony stayed stone cold silent on the matter. It indicated that Cho hit on something worrisome, but they proceeded anyway. 

“Today, I think you will,” Clint says. With malice, he batters at Steve with the sword. 

The clang of blade against vibranium rings in the darkness. The gravel under Steve’s booted feet slides away, making it difficult for him to grab purchase enough to get a parry to cause Clint to fall down the slope. He has one option. Leaving his back open he targets low – Clint’s knees. Not allowing reaction time, Steve strikes again and again until the construct cries out from the open gash on his legs and tumbles down the hill. The bag falls off his shoulder – Ultron’s mistake for not writing code to keep it with him. Unfortunately, it lands a good 3 meters from Steve’s position. Steve scrambles to the bag, the gravel a constant moving force beneath him. 

The construct staggers to its feet, one knee bleeding copiously. Clint limps toward Steve, his face contorted in pain. The bizarre haircut is gone. The sword replaced with arrows. Steve grabs for the bag, but Clint falls and the agony of his wail echoes in the air.

“Steve, Cap, please.” He slips further on the steep hill that seems to end in an abyss. 

Steve looks away, grappling to catch hold of the bag before it follows Clint. The backpack slides again, but Steve hooks it with the tip of his fingers and yanks it toward him. That motion only causes him to skid further down the gravel slope. 

Clint whines in pain and then another figure appears at the top of the hill. It’s not who Steve wants or wishes. It’s Laura.

“Please Captain, please help him.” She’s weeping for her husband. It’s right out of a novel. Ultron’s learned human emotions, how to manipulate them, but not how to feel them. 

Steve ignores her and claws his way up the hill, but the gravel shifts and moves like grains of sand down a dune. He needs two hands and that means putting the shield on his back. He grunts and locks the shield in place. The backpack secured against this shoulder as well. He digs into the gravel with his hands and kicks into the side of the hill with the metal toes of his boots. Starting to climb up the hillside, he disregards the badgering sounds of Clint’s begging. It isn’t Clint. He knows that but his heart loops in his chest and his gut twists. Partially up the hill, he hears the familiar whine of the gauntlet charging. His attention snaps to the top of the hill as Tony targets and fires at Laura. She drops like a rock.

Clint rages behind him. Tony pivots and shoots again over Steve’s head and dead center in Clint’s chest. The doppelganger topples but doesn’t stop his ascent. Tony skids his way down the hill, hooking his hand into the collar of Steve’s uniform. 

“Not that way, this way.” 

He notices for the first time that Tony has Steve’s bag. “Down the hill?”

“It’s the Passage to the next rim.” 

It makes no sense to Steve; Ultron had been trying to use it as a strategy to knock Steve out of the battle. Steve hesitates. Can Ultron construct Tony? Would Steve know the difference? 

“Come on Steve! It’s closing!”

Steve balances and then looks over his shoulder and sees the faintest shimmer of blue light – a light that’s similar to the way Tony’s arc reactor used to glow in the dark. 

“Come on!” Tony tugs at his wrist and Steve allows it, he moves toward the light. 

It could be his end. This might be ruse by Ultron to get him to fall to his ‘death’ in this virtual world. The light gets brighter as they clamber down the hill. Clint gets up, his chest and legs gush blood, but there’s a red light shining from his eyes. The glitches are back. His figure switches between the archer and the sword fighter. 

“We don’t have time,” Tony mutters and skips down the hill, only to tumble and pitch forward right at the feet of the Clint construct. It yanks out the sword from his back scabbard and prepares to impale Tony as he tries to get control of his descent. 

With no time to think about it, Steve pulls off his shield, aims, and flings it at the construct. The horror of Clint’s head flying, decapitated by the sharp edge of the shield will haunt Steve for years to come. He scrambles the rest of the way down the hill, grasps Tony, and leaps for the pulsating blue light. His shield is lost to him and the blue light is cold and frozen.

CHAPTER 3

**INTERLUDE**

“This can’t keep happening. It’s going to damage their hearts,” Cho says. Her features tell she’s deeply troubled by the report outs from the monitors scattered about the room. “It looks like their running on pure adrenaline.”

“But it’s calmed down, now. Hasn’t it?” Natasha asks. She refuses to give up. Whatever the doctors say, they’ll modify, cope, change their game plan but giving up isn’t one of those choices. 

“For now,” Cho says, and she meets Natasha’s gaze as if to ask for a confidant, someone who will be on her side when she presents the idea of shutting the whole experiment down. 

Natasha freezes her features in return. This is their only hand. In a high stakes game of poker, folding isn’t an option on the last hand. 

“I hope you know what you’re doing. Captain Rogers might be able to handle the increased stress on his heart, but Stark isn’t. If he hasn’t told you, then I will and damned confidentiality. He has heart damage that puts him at higher risk.” Her argument supports her poignant silent plea.

Natasha learned how to ignore emotional plea bargaining long again. “Then he knows the risks. We continue.” It’s up to her. The rest of the team lean on her to lead them through to the other side of this insanity. She plans to do just that. If there’s one thing she’s come to understand it would be that life barrages you not with things you can handle, but things you most definitely cannot. How you rise up to greet them doesn’t make you a hero, but a survivor. 

The Avengers are survivors. The hero tag is an afterthought. 

“Continue,” she repeats. 

Cho surrenders to her like so many others in her past. Sometimes it breaks her a little inside to see it.

**oOo**

The plains before them howl with wickedly cold winds. Vast ice and snow greet them with rolling dark clouds covering the sky. A blizzard awaits them in this rim. Tony manifested his armor after he retrieved the bag from Steve’s shoulder. He’d taken something out that looked similar to an arc reactor and somehow pasted it to his chest. The armor crept out of it and covered him like a million tiny insects erecting the suit. It provides a good cover from the winds and the frigid temperatures. 

On the other hand, Steve simply makes do with his stealth uniform. Winds sting his face and burn his eyes. They need shelter as quickly as possible while they look for the Passage to the next rim. He scans the horizon line to see only jagged hills of snow and ice. 

Over the winds, Tony yells, “Do you think Ultron might be using what he knows about each one of us to build these defenses? Maybe this is rim is representative of you?”

Steve jerks his head in a nod. It has occurred to him. “Could be.” He squints as he surveys the snowy wilderness around them. Spotting a rocky rise he points. “Do you think we could find shelter in that area?” 

“Maybe. I’m reading some geological anomalies. That could be Ultron playing with us or the simulation of caves or underground areas.” Tony marches forward a few steps before stopping. “Maybe you should hold onto me.”

“I think I can walk a few miles without falling over and going into stasis, Tony.” 

Tony chuckles. “I’m sure you can, but the armor’s plating is warmed when I’m in colder weather to de-ice it. Might help keep you warm.”

“Oh, okay. That’s good idea.” Steve looks around and then realizes his shield is lost. “Do you think I could conjure up the shield again?”

Tony shakes his head. “Probably not. The conjuring ability can’t be accessed in Ultron controlled reality. It still exists as part of the roleplay but it’s just not here. Sorry.”

Steve adjusts his bag that Tony handed over to him. “It’s okay. I have some other options.” Not much, his bag is mostly for survival. It will come in handy in this place.

“Come on.” Tony wiggles his armored fingers.

Steve joins Tony, standing hip to hip. With the armor on they are nearly the same height. Tony wraps an arm over his shoulder as Steve slips his arm around Tony’s waist. The heat radiates off the plating and it helps Steve’s core. He’s grateful and says so to Tony.

If Tony grins, Steve doesn’t know, he only says, “We’re off to see the wizard.”

Steve snorts. “I got that reference.”

“Of course, you did, old man.” 

Steve smiles but turns his face away from Tony to hide it. The fall back to teasing Steve warms him more than the heated plates. He keeps his mind steady, firmly placed in the idea of where they need to go, away from the possibilities and the potentials from the past. Thinking about what could have been and what has been lost helps no one. He learned that when he found himself awake in 2012 and his whole world disintegrated around him. 

They walk in silence the persistent wind their only companion. In the broad distance, Steve studies the cloud cover. Dark gray clouds move swiftly over the sky. Beyond the line of snow, a ridge of mountains looms. Getting out of this rim level presents a brand new problem. He hadn’t gambled on having to climb mountains. 

“How far can you fly in the armor with a passenger?” Steve asks, his words a little breathy due to the heavy winds.

“Not far. Not with this armor. It’s not complete and doesn’t have all the instructions it needs. I haven’t finished the coding. The basics-.” He stops as a gust steals his breath. Once it dies down, he continues, “The nanotechnology I based this on, I was able to do all the math so I could conjure it. I don’t have all the abilities interfaced or calculated. Nanotech is a horse of a different color than routine fabrication.”

This time Steve smiles in front of Tony. He can’t help it. Tony purposeful use of references Steve gets touches him. He forces himself to concentrate. “So, no flying with a passenger.”

“Barely any flying at all. I have some launch work done but not the maneuvering or the landing. It’s be damned dangerous,” Tony calls out. He lifts his armored hand. “Over there.”

Steve directs his attention to the ridge where they first identified a potential safe haven. The wind stirs up the lightly powdered snow cover over the icier sheets below it. It’s difficult to make out the details. “Do you see something?”

“HUD’s showing a partial fissure in the rocks. Could be a cave or something,” Tony says. 

Steve nods. The cold burns his cheeks and chaps his lips. “Good. We’ll figure out a plan once we get there.” He doesn’t mutter – if Ultron lets us get there, but Tony answers him as if he’d spoken out loud.

“He wants you frozen. A cave is a perfect place to have you buried in an avalanche.”

“Well, that’s a pleasant thought,” Steve replies. They trudge forward. 

Slipping on the ice becomes their new hobby. Several times when Tony slides down he can’t get up in the armor. Steve hoists him up but it’s getting more difficult as his hands freeze and grow numb. The bitterness of the air eats at his exposed fingers and he pushes his hands under his arms. He can’t hold onto Tony anymore. To compensate, Tony walks behind him with his arms around Steve’s waist. It makes it difficult to climb up the icy slope. When Steve slides on the ice, Tony stabilizes him but to the detriment of his own balance. They both go down, lurching backward and plummeting across the snowy ice. In his armor Tony collides with him, striking him hard enough that Steve’s teeth clang and he feels a rib crack. It huffs the breath right out of him, but he manages to halt their descent. Tony rolls and his gauntlet smacks Steve right in the nose. He feels and hears the stomach churning pop and then the gush of blood from his nose.

Steve has enough sense in him to clamp onto Tony’s side panel and stop him. They lie there, panting and in his case gurgling. At least the blood feels warm against his frozen face. 

“There goes all our progress,” Tony says. 

Steve stares up at the grey clouds – how impenetrable and powerful they look. They don’t look like the clouds that Thor calls upon and his mind drifts to the God of Thunder – wondering where he is and what he’s doing.

“Earth to Steve?” 

“Shit. Sorry.”

“Can you help me up?” 

Steve clamors to his knees and wipes at his nose with this arm. It throbs and he hisses but shuffles over to Tony. “I don’t see how you can possibly fight in a suit of armor you can’t even get up in if you get knocked over.” Steve tucks his hand under Tony’s arm.

“Excuse you, this armor isn’t finished. And what the hell happened to your nose?”

Steve frowns at him and heaves him to a standing position. “I ran into a gauntlet.” 

“Shit. Fuck. I didn’t realize. Are you okay, Cap?” 

Steve rubs at his cheek but that just makes his nose pound like someone stabs him repeatedly in the face. “The serum will take care of it. I need to straighten it, but otherwise it’ll be fine. We need to find some place.” His voice rasps; he spits out some blood, then looks up and stops. “What’s that?” He’s no longer looking down at the stain in the snow, but farther out to the horizon.

“What’s wha-.” Tony whistles. “That looks like the ocean. Where the hell did it come from? It wasn’t there when we first got to this level.”

Through a clotting nose, Steve says, “He’s learning, but he doesn’t know everything yet.” He points to the shore where a crashed Quin Jet lies. “I didn’t fly a Quin Jet into the ocean, it was the Valkyrie.”

“That’s really odd. He should know better,” Tony says but heads toward the wreck. He turns briefly to Steve. “Are you coming?”

“Do we think it’s safe?” His face pounds and he really wants it to be safe.

“Well, it’s probably the next clue to getting to the rim.”

Steve frowns. It’s probably a way for Ultron to distract them from the rim. Ultron leading them to the Hub sounds dubious at best, and malevolent at worst. 

“You let me decide whether it’s Ultron trying to distract us.” Tony marches through the snow. The swirl of wind picks up the snow around him.

Steve glues his mouth shut. That’s the second time Tony voiced an answer to a concern Steve hadn’t vocalized. He convinces himself for a second time it’s mere coincidence. He follows Tony even though it might end up as a major confrontation Steve’s not up for right now. The spears of pain in his face matches the ones jutting into his side. Sitting down sounds good. 

The sky darkens in response and he shudders. His hands are stiff and frozen by the time they get to the downed jet. Ice clogs the entrance in the back of the Quin Jet. It looks like a giant iceberg grows out of the backend of the jet. There’s no getting into it that way. 

“I think I can blow a hole in the side,” Tony says. 

Steve nods. At this point with the coagulated blood on his face, his frozen hands, and his cracked rib, he’s easy to please. He stands next to Tony, letting the heat radiating off the plating warm him. Tony lifts both arms and aims at the Quin Jet. He blasts and then drills holes along the side. Once he’s finished, they slam it open and push the severed fuselage aside. 

Ultron knows the details of the inside of the Quin Jet down to the last button. The crash mangled most of the jet, yet the minutiae from reality is still visible. He drops his pack and goes to the cockpit. Checking the readouts and trying to get the engines to turn over proves futile. It’ll be shelter but not much more. The first rule of survival shelter, food, water. That’s all they need. Shelter the most important because of the weather.

“You want me to fix your nose?” Tony says as he sheds the armor. It’s a miracle to behold how it literally drops away into the small metal pouch on his chest. 

“That would be nice. Thanks.” He settles in the pilot’s chair and Tony sits next to him. He pulls off his helmet. There’s not much light but enough for the job. He just needs it straightened. 

Tony’s hands are warm in comparison to Steve’s skin. “Fuck, you’re cold.” He opens both hands and places them on either side of Steve’s face. It feels like a dream and Steve finds himself closing his eyes. He snaps them open and shoos away the thoughts and hopes of another time. 

With seemingly practiced hands, Tony gently touches Steve’s nose. “Cartilage is really out of alignment. It’s snapped. You sure you want me to do this?”

“Just be quick,” Steve says, muffled by the swelling and the pain. 

“Did you know I used to do this a lot when I was at MIT. Became quite the expert. All the grad students would come to me when they broke their nose,” Tony says as he feels along the bridge. “You’d be surprised at how many grad students break their noses.” 

Steve knows that Tony’s trying to distract him, and even then, the pain explodes in his head when he firmly forces the cartilage back in place. Tears prickle in his eyes and he suppresses the need to gag. 

“Don’t throw up on me, Cap. It’ll hurt more than you messing up my clothes.”

He calms his reaction as the pain turns to a more persistent kind of agony. “’m good.”

“Sure, you are,” Tony says and jostles him on the shoulder. “You might have a nearly imperceptible bump now from a certain angle, but otherwise I think it’s a pretty good job.” He assesses Steve for a few more minutes, his hands probing Steve’s face, touching his jaw line. Steve can almost imagine something else.

He puts the stray thoughts away. “Thank you. I think that’s good.” Talking hurts. “We need a heat source and some food.” His bag becomes his reprieve from the feelings threatening to interfere with the mission. Long ago, he might have had a chance, a real chance with Tony, but that was before the confession, before Tony stopped calling him Steve.

Setting a small propane heater on the floor of the Quin Jet, Steve preps it to light when Tony stops him. 

“Why don’t I try and get the jet working?”

“Don’t think I can wait that long. My fingers are purple.” His usual deft hands are clumsy and bungling as he works to light the burner.

Tony squats down next to Steve. He places the burner farther into the cockpit area of the jet. “Away from the wind,” he explains. He takes the lighter from Steve and the flames flare and then flicker as they catch. 

“The baffles should keep the wind from causing too much trouble,” Steve says but already he feels the heat and leans toward it. He cringes as his hands thaw. 

“You have to do that slow,” Tony says, examining the damage. It’s not severe; they weren’t outside for more than 45 minutes Steve estimates. “Here, let me.” He reaches for Steve’s hand, but he pre-empts him.

“Can you find something to ward off the cold from the hole in the side of the jet? Might help keep what little heat this gives off in.” 

Tony looks more hurt than affronted, but he goes to the mid-section of the Quin Jet and manages to find a fire blanket. He uses a stream of whatever those creepy crawler bugs things that come out of his gauntlet to affix it to the fuselage. 

“What are those things?” Steve asks more to distract himself from the pain in his hands, face, and side. 

“The nanoparticles I was telling you about. Technically nanobots. I still have a lot of work to do on them, but I can basically program them to do these types of commands, and build the suit, do functions of the suit.”

“You said nanotechnology earlier, I didn’t realize it was so versatile.” Steve flexes his hands. The serum works wonders. 

“It’s more than that,” Tony says but doesn’t elaborate. He kneels next to Steve. “We have to make this fire bigger or we’re both going to freeze to death. Well, I’ll freeze, you’ll do whatever you do.”

Steve ignores the slight and digs out his thermos. He fills the cup with coffee and gives it to Tony. It’s still steaming hot. 

“You brought coffee?” Tony smiles and picks it up from the small ledge Steve placed it on. “How much?”

Steve snickers. “When I thought it up, I thought of a never empty thermos of coffee for you. Didn’t know if it would work in the virtual reality. But seems to.” He leans the open thermos over and lets Tony take a peek.

“That’s fucking brilliant. Wish I’d thought of that.” He smells the hot liquid and luxuriates in it for a minute before he cracks his eyes open at Steve. “Wait a minute. You said thermos of coffee for you. That means you brought this specifically for me.”

Shrugging, Steve brings out a small lantern and turns it on. “Well, I knew you wouldn’t think of any type of food or survival supplies. So that’s what I thought of. Most of this will last for as long as we’re in here. I kind of wish I’d thought of something like that for my shield.”

“Ah! I have something for that!” Tony rifles around in his bag and brings out a small clip that has a round disc that can be no larger than Steve’s fist. “Put that on your wrist.”

“Okay?” Steve snaps it on and then Tony reaches over and pushes the small disc that looks like a replicate of Steve’s shield. A holographic image of the shield appears.

“Not holographic. This is nanographic. In other words, thousands of tiny nanobots spread out from the main disc and form a lighted graphic display that is the equivalent of the shield. Touch it.”

Tentatively, Steve places his hand on the bright display and the nanobots thicken around his grip. He gasps and pulls his hand away.

“It’ll function just like your regular shield. Or should. I didn’t have time to test out the math so there might be some weird maneuvers or functions of it. I thought to bring it along at the last moment so hopefully I remember to think of all the required math.” He claps his hands. “Try and take it off your wrist.”

“Are you sure? It won’t disintegrate into a thousand of these little buggers all over the floor?” Steve reaches to the shield.

“Well it’s better to know now than later,” Tony urges him with a quick wink. 

When Steve touches the shield of light again, the nanobots congregate around his grasp and then he feels the weight of it lift off the clasp. It’s a different feel than the real thing, but the fact that he can feel it, touch it, makes him believe it would do some damage. “Once I get a chance, I can test it.”

“But it feels all right and the integrity is holding.” Tony nods as if to himself. He reaches and smooths a hand down the curve of the shield. The nanobots vibrate and Steve feels the slight tickle. 

“It’s wonderful, Tony. Thank you so much. How’d you know I’d need it?” Steve carefully places the shield back on the clip and then presses the disc; the nanobots collect and then stow in the center of the disc. 

“I didn’t. I figured it might be a good thing to test out here before I actually made it in the real world. It was just for shits and giggles. Now it’s for real,” Tony says. 

Steve stretches to get his relax back and the cracked rib protests. He coughs and that just hurts like hell. “Sorry.” He fishes out his canteen and drinks the water. “Do you think our bodies will be okay in the real world? I mean I won’t have a broken nose out there, right?” His voice still sounds muffled.

“No. It shouldn’t. The stress might ratchet up the effects on our hearts but nothing too dreadful, I don’t think.” He grabs the thermos again and fills up his cup. “You have any snacks in there?”

“Yep. Hershey bars, rations.” Steve scatters his horde across the floor of the Quin Jet. “I’m ravenous like in real life.”

“You will get hungry. We are using calories. I’m most worried about you. It’s not like intravenous feeding will keep you alive and healthy.” Tony selects a packet of dried fruit and a chocolate bar. The wind picks at that moment to howls and shake the crashed jet. 

“I have soup. Do you want me to make some?” Steve asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer. He gets the camping equipment from his pack and assembles the little cooktop with a small pot. “This kind of reminds me of the stories my Ma used to tell me of the Fae.”

“The Fae?”

“Yeah,” Steve says and rummages until he finds the can of chicken stew. “Ma used to tell me of the Fae, or Faeries. They would come to the human world and snatch children, leave a changeling in their place. If a mother caught one of the Fae stealing their child, she’d have to yell - _Gairum augus coisricim thú_ – or God bless you.” He pours the stew into the pot. “But the problem was humans can’t survive in the world of the Fae. If you eat food beyond the veil then you wither and die inside because it has no nutritional value, not for humans. This is kind of like that.” 

“Well that’s a pleasant thought,” Tony says. 

“Ma used to tell me all kinds of Irish stories from the old country,” Steve smiles as he thinks about her. “She was such a little woman but everyone in the neighborhood always listened to her. Kids would always say, Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. Very respectful.” 

“How long has it been?” Tony asks quietly. “I mean erase the time in the ice. How long has it been since she passed?”

It takes while for Steve to figure it out, and even then, he’s not 100% sure. “Probably around seven years give or take.” He stirs the pot. “The Depression was going on pretty strong and I had just about nothing.” He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. You want soup?”

Tony clasps his hand. “Sure, it does.” When Steve looks up at Tony, he continues, “You miss her. You miss your life. You never talk about it. Not at all. You can, if you need to, you know.”

Steve swallows thickly and pours the soup into one small tin cup and moves it over to Tony. Steve drinks right from the pot. “Thank you, Tony. That means a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” he pauses. “Steve.”

Steve tools his features not to beam with happiness at Tony. He sips his soup and the warmth flushes across his face. It both hurts and aches. He pays it no mind. Being here with Tony in the middle of a cold tundra plays with his daydreams. His focus is the job and nothing more. 

Tony interrupts his thoughts. “So, you have any idea where the next Passage is. How do we get to the next rim?”

Steve glances around the cold wreck. He lifts a shoulder. “No idea. I don’t see how Ultron could be so wrong about me. Why a Quin Jet?”

The blizzard outside choses then to rock the downed Quin Jet. Icy waters seep into the cracks around them. Tony grips the sides of the fuselage while Steve steadies the burner and the soup. The gusts die down and then Tony crumples, sighing.

“This is all my fault. If I hadn’t built Ultron this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Don’t think that way,” Steve says and realizes how that sounds. “Ultron was an attempt to save the world from outside attacks. No one can fault you for that.”

“You did,” Tony says and cringes outwardly. “Sorry, automatic response.”

“I didn’t fault you, I didn’t like it though,” Steve added. “But we did get Vision out of it. He’s worth it.”

Tony smiles. “You really think so?”

“I think that Wanda thinks so, which is very strange and outside my limited old man range of understanding.” He indicates the soup. “Drink. We have to keep our strength up in his virtual world.” 

The wind screeches around them. Tony clasps his tin cup and drinks down the soup. “So the Passage, old man? What do you think?”

Steve scans the surrounding area through the iced windows. Carefully, he stands up. His rib is already feeling better. The throbbing in his nose decreases to an unpleasant ache. He balances as he picks his way through the Quin Jet trying to find a clue to the next Passage. “Truthfully, I don’t see anything that would be remotely about me. I didn’t down a Quin Jet. How could Ultron get it so wrong?”

“Not sure,” Tony says and climbs to his feet. He checks the controls in the cockpit area of the jet. He flicks a few but nothing happens. “I’m not sure. It has to be you. The cold, the frozen water. It doesn’t make any other sense.”

“How do we know that it’s all about us anyhow?” Steve moves around pieces of the shattered fuselage for signs. “Maybe this is just here to throw us off.”

“Ultron could want to do that.” The pitiful light from the lantern flickers and casts Tony is bluish relief against the windscreen of the cockpit. “If he’s delaying us, then there’s a reason for that delay. He mustn’t have all the defenses he needs.”

“Then we should probably pack up and not stay here the night.”

“Have you looked outside. He’s doing a pretty damned good job. He could literally freeze us to death in here,” Tony says as he points out the window.

“You said we probably won’t die in the outside world.”

“Probably is still a maybe, and even if we don’t – well, he could make it impossible for us to enter again. Now that he knows we can – he’s probably building defenses so no one else can do it.” 

Steve crosses his arms. “I suppose you would do that and that’s why you know.”

“Yep.” He pops the ‘p’. “This sucks.”

He can’t deny the reality of the unreal situation they’re in. Being part of a robot super villain’s brain sent him for a loop when they first arrived, coming to the realization that they are fighting Tony’s super intelligence might be a little too much to handle today. He settles on the thought that maybe, just for now, they should take care of the essentials.

“We need rest, and we need to eat. Whatever this place is, it plays with our biological clocks. We need to fight it and keep our strength up.” Steve goes back to their little camp site and sits. He pats the space next to him.

“Is that an order?” Tony’s hanging onto the bulkhead as if for life.

“Yes. From _your_ Captain.”

Tony snickers. “You just made it weird, you know.”

He sips his soup and raises it as if in salute. “I know.” He winks. 

Tony laughs and sits down. “Thanks. I needed that,” he says after he’s finished another cup of coffee. “You’re more than a little snarky yourself, you know.”

Steve bobs his head. “Yeah. I do. Buc-. My friends would say that but not using that term. I think that’s a new term.”

Looking away, Tony replies, “You can say his name.”

“I don’t want to upset you, Tony.”

Tony looks up from concentrating on the tin cup of soup. “I get it’s not his fault, but -.”

“You can’t forgive me for lying to you.”

Tony clams up. Steve takes the hit, like he takes all the hits – stoic and reserved. After they finish their soup, he cleans out the cup and the pot and then pours another cup of coffee for himself. He pulls out the single sleeping bag and tosses it to Tony.

“I’ll take first watch.”

Tony says nothing in return, simply nods, opens the bag, and snuggles down in it. It’s fiercely cold and the small propane burner warms a tiny circle around it. He moves away, allowing Tony access to the warmth. He stands up near the cockpit and watches the snow batter the jet. 

It was only three years ago he lost Bucky and downed the Valkyrie – at least by his counting. He doesn’t have much left of who he was anymore. Back then, he hid a lot of who he was, even from Bucky. Steve wraps his arms around himself, the cold creeps in like it always does. Maybe at one time, he might have had a chance to change the path he’d picked but not anymore. With a quick glance he checks on Tony, who seems to be sleeping. Steve will never know how it feels to sleep next to him, to listen to the rise and fall of his chest, to know that warm body close to him, how it means the world.

He stops his train of thought. 

Denying his desires became second nature as a young man. It’s not something that’s a foreign concept to him. Being alone and on his own remains his stasis quo. He misses knowing he has someone to come home to. His Ma always worried about him.

“Having someone, Steven, someone dear to you it’s important. Someone you can count on,” she said to him more than once.

He can count on the team. The Avengers are there for him. Sam and Natasha are his closest friends. Wanda is like the little sister he never had. Clint like the screwball cousin with the secret wife. He smiles. It’s enough, he tells himself. It has to be enough. The needs of the world supersede the needs and desires of one man. He looks over at Tony whose turned away from the light to sleep. 

Sitting in the cockpit chair, Steve leans back and watches the storm. His mind turns to the problem at hand. Ultron wants to keep them pinned down. He doesn’t want them to make progress traversing his brain. The possibility occurs to him that they aren’t fighting a separate enemy but an alter ego of Tony’s. How brilliant Tony is might lead them to dance around in a virtual match of chess without end. Ultron though holds the upper hand. While Tony’s intelligent beyond anything that Steve can compare, Ultron has the internet at the tips of his virtual fingers. Doesn’t matter what super genius Tony is – there is a limit to his knowledge. 

If Bruce stuck around, then the obvious choice for this venture would have been the good doctor. Two massive brains are better than one. What good does he have to offer Tony in the middle of journey through an artificial brain. 

He rubs at his eyes. It’s one of his go to mental knots – thinking he’s not worth it. It might be the reason he always went to the extremes. Maybe also part of the reason he agreed on Project Rebirth in the first place. His life detoured from reality a long time ago. When he walked down that long hallway with Peggy towering over him. Yet did he ever think he would have to chance or the ability to shed the fake façade and find someone he desired.

That’s not fair.

He loved Peggy, much more than platonically.

What he feels now. He gazes at Tony. What he feels now is indescribable. But it’s over before it began. He looks back at the raging storm outside the Quin Jet. He focuses on the problem in front of him. He needs to stop letting himself dwell on what could have been. He made his bed with lies and omissions, now he has to lie in the thorns of untruths. Shifting his thoughts back to the problem at hand is the only way to force the stoicism back to the front of his brain.

Ultron trapped them here for a reason. The AI is planning something. Steve plays with the dead switches on the control panel and dashboard. Most don’t respond. There’s no heat, little light, and nothing hopeful about the wreck. At least the water only seeps into the back of the jet. 

He hits the comm switch and smiles. No one is going to answer. Yet a voice echoes in the darkness.

“Hey big guy…”

He jumps and from behind him he hears a groan. Steve smacks the same control icon again.

“Hey big guy…”

“How the hell is Natasha here?” Tony grumbles from within the sleeping bag. 

Steve’s heart races but he’s able to quell the shaking and say, “It’s just a recording.”

Tony bolts upright. “A recording? What? Play it again.” He fights the sleeping bag to free himself and stumbles over to the controls.

Steve presses the icon. “Hey big guy…”

“That’s it?” Tony rubs at his face. He has a blanket fold impression on his cheek and his eyes look bleary. He scratches a hand through the mess of his hair.

“I think so. I can’t get anything else. There’s not much charge left in the comm’s battery, I think.” He knows Tony engineered it so that the comm would have a separate energy source than the rest of the Quin Jet. It’s a surprise to him that Ultron kept it that way, but it shows Ultron’s linear thinking and might offer an advantage to them. 

“Bring the lantern over here,” Tony says and squats down to check under the panel.

“You can wait until morning Tony,” Steve says.

“You can go get some sleep and I’ll work on it.” 

It’s the right thing to do and Steve hates it. He despises the idea of leaving Tony alone with no other protection but his wits and the Iron Man armor. It’s a ridiculous thought, Tony can take care of himself. 

Steve places the lantern on the seat he vacated and goes to the sleeping bag. “You’ll wake me-.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry. Go to sleep, old man.”

Surrendering, he crawls into the sleeping bag and cuddles close to the pathetic burner, trying to warm up enough that he can fall asleep. Even as a child, being cold hampered his ability to get comfortable enough to fall asleep. As he snuggles down in the bag, he smells the mixture of coffee, cologne, and sweat – distinctly Tony’s fragrance. It lulls him and he smiles. His eyes drift closed, and he dreams.

He dreams of Tony. 

He dreams of possibilities.

He dreams of touching, and holding, and crying out with pleasure. 

He dreams of kneeling at Tony’s feet, letting Tony use his mouth for whatever he needs in a near devotional ritual of love. He loves the taste, the weight, the heaviness. He wants it to last forever, he sits here for every single minute of the day and night if that’s what Tony wants.

He startles when a hand touches his shoulder, and he jerks awake. He blinks to see Tony hunched above him and his dream momentarily merges with the present. He gets half hard at the thought, but the cold sweeping in from the wreckage cools him fast enough. 

“I found something,” Tony says and stands, leaving Steve to gather himself together. He hopes to hell he didn’t say anything. 

Climbing out of the bedding, he joins Tony at the console. There’s a small device hooked up to the control panel, pulsing with light that it feeds into the circuits. “I got it to run. You’re not going to believe what I found.” He hits a switch. The monitor flickers to life. It’s Natasha right after they defeated Ultron.

“Hey big guy, we did it. The job’s finished. Now I need you to turn this bird around, okay? We can’t track you in stealth mode. So help me out, I need you-.”

“This isn’t my nightmare,” Steve says as the recording darkens.

“No. It’s not,” Tony says and crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s either Natasha’s or Banner’s.”

Steve surveys the arctic landscape around them. He shakes his head. “No. It’s not Bruce’s or Natasha’s. I should have known. Something felt familiar about this place.”

“What?” Tony chews on his lip. He’s worried about Steve’s theory.

“Ultron is your creation. You’re the brilliant mind that brought him to life. You’re Doctor Frankenstein and he’s the monster. The book ends with Frankenstein in the arctic looking for the monster. This Passage is through beating the Hulk. The monster.”

“Fuck. Fuck a fucking duck,” Tony says and tears the device from the panel. “Pack up. Now that we know, he’s going to come at us – any minute.”

Steve bends over to gather his supplies. “How would he know? You said he can’t read our minds.” He switches off the sterno burner, packs the lantern, and slips the thermos into his pack. He misses the shield but then he remembers the small clip on his cuff. 

“He must surveil us; he has to. We’re in his fucking game.”

“We have to go,” Steve says. “But where?” He adjusts the straps of his backpack and watches as Tony does the same.

“Well, we can’t hang out here.” With a quick look at the windscreen again, he says, “We need to find the Passage. Any ideas from the novel?”

“Not really.” Steve barely remembers the conclusion of the novel. He read it when he was just a boy. “He’s in the arctic. I don’t know, Tony.”

“Okay, okay.” He squeezes Steve’s arm. “Let’s head out and see if we can get any clues. At least the storm’s let up.” 

Possibly a bad sign, but Steve refrains from mentioning it. Tearing down the fire blanket, Steve rolls it up and stuffs it into his overburden pack. The blustery wind hits him full in the face. He gasps as he talks. “Any-anything else?”

The armor folds over Tony but he manages to hand Steve a pair of gloves. “Found them in the back.” 

Steve thanks him. A pair of complete gloves instead of fingerless ones will do wonders for him. He puts on his helmet and while half his face is still exposed, at least he has some protection against the howling wind. He drops out of the wreckage into the deep snow. The top layer of snow is soft, but the bottom layer is hard with ice. It isn’t going to be an easy trek, regardless of which way they turn. 

The ocean is out. If Ultron snuck in the Passage to the Hub in the ocean, they’re dead in the water. Steve grins at his own pun but then stops and focuses. “If it’s in the water-.”

“Yep, I got you there. I don’t think so. I think that Ultron likes to play with his food, as I said. He wouldn’t do that. He wants us to struggle.”

“He wants the Hulk to eat us,” Steve says and turns inland. 

Sweeping dunes of snow dotted with rocky mountains greet him. The rocks are grey and blue in color but with a hint of red as if Ultron painted them specially to emphasize blood and death. When they first arrived in this rim they’d set out toward the mountain ridge thinking it would offer protection from the blizzard. Now Steve surveys the ridge line, the steepled peaks, looking for any crag or cavern that might hint of a Passage. The sun is barely out peeking through the foothills to the east. The snow cover glitters in the coming dawn’s light.

“We could try and get the Quin Jet to fly,” Steve suggests.

Tony shakes his head. “No can do. I checked it while you slept. It’s more of a fake than the real thing. He put what he wanted us to find in it and that’s it. There’s no fly controls, no stabilizer, no real engine. It’s mostly just window dressing.”

“Shit.”

“Yep. I should have guessed. A lot of games will do that. Window dressing without any real substance.” 

“Enough substance for us to figure out what the whole rim is about,” Steve says and then cringes. “Ultron really does like playing with his food.”

“I don’t. I hate it. He’s evolved that-.”

“Devolved you mean. There is no way that’s a higher function.” Steve wishes he’d planned on sunglasses. As the sun reflects off the white of the snow, his light eyes ache. Being snow blind decreases their chances exponentially. “You should use whatever flying function you can manage and-.”

“Survey. I can survey but not much more. Like I told you the maneuvering is off and the landing a bitch,” Tony says. He powers up the armor. “Stand clear, this baby isn’t certified safe.”

“Tony!” Steve yells as the armor launches into the air. 

He curses as he follows the arc of armor’s ascent into the air. It’s like a rocket without aim. The armor shoots up into the arcs at 45 degrees and then plunges downward. Steve takes off as fast as he can manage in the knee deep snow. The serum helps but the cold snap of the air in his lung feels sharp and severe. He pushes through the pain and prays his eyes to adjust to the fiercely white light. The pitch of Tony’s scream even muffled by the suit urges him onward, up the slope of the beach to the foothills of the mountains. He sees the crash and flinches as Tony somersaults and collides with a boulder before coming to a stop. 

Panting in heavy breathes, Steve clambers through the drifts of snow. Each step burns his muscles and his lungs clench like they haven’t since he had asthma all those years ago. The crunch of the snow beneath his booted feet, the intake of breath, the exhale of air stirs with the wind to deafen him to much else. Tony’s not moving – that’s all Steve thinks as he clears the rocks to the small crest at the foothills. He leaps over them and lands in a waist deep drift. He refuses to let it slow him down, he plows through it like a maniac with a death wish. He hears growling only to realize it’s himself, pressing through the thick snow, the ice so jagged and sharp it pierces into his side if he falters and falls. 

Steve claws his way toward Tony, scraping through the icy daggers until he’s able to crawl the last few meters to his side. Tony’s lying prone in the snow and Steve throws down his own bag in order to maneuver him onto his back. The new armor presents a problem since Steve doesn’t know where the emergency release switch is.

“Tony?”

He groans in response.

“Tony, come on. You need to tell me how to get this thing open so I can check on you?”

“Captain Rogers, if you command the armor to open using your compound access code it will open.”

Steve frowns. “Friday?”

“At your service, old man.”

He doesn’t particularly like it that the artificial intelligence calls him Tony’s nickname but he figures it must be the way that Tony originally programmed it when he decided what he might bring with him – mentally – in this virtual world.

“07041918cap2012-04042014.”

The armor melts away from Tony’s face, that’s battered and bruised. He lets out a troubled breath and coughs. Steve bends over him, checking to see if anything impeding his airway. Tony bats him away.

“Gah!” Tony cries out and tries to roll over. Steve grabs his arm and helps him. He vomits into the snow. It’s not blood, just bile. Tony pants and groans as he heaves again. Steve keeps a hand on his neck to steady him. 

Snorting, Tony falls back and Steve guides him to lie down. “Are you okay?”

“Hell of a ride, Cap. Thought I was going to vomit in the suit. Not ready for prime time that’s for sure. The little nanobot fuckers want to do whatever they want, not working in synchronicity. Makes for a chaotic flight.” He reaches out and Steve catches his arm and reads the signal to pull him into a sitting position. Once upright, Tony turns to the side and spits a few times.

A gust hits them and Steve squints at the frigid air. Tony activates the helmet again without allowing him to assess the cuts and abrasions. Considering the freezing air, Steve can’t blame him. 

“Any clues?”

Tony confirms. “Up on the ridge, high up. There’s a flashing blue light. I’m assuming it’s the Passage. Ultron can’t hide it, exactly. Passages are there because they’re virtual footprints of his construction of the Hub.”

“So, all we need to do is climb a mountain without any gear?” Steve asks.

“That’s about it. Simple, right?” Tony offers his hand again and Steve grasps hold of it to hoist him to his feet. He checks Tony’s backpack and then slings on his own. 

“I do have a rope.” His tone doesn’t even sound hopeful to him.

“We can use some of the nanobots to format a grappling hook.”

“Can you do that?” 

“I should be able to. I’ve seen them in real life and it’s not like it’s a difficult engineering problem. Just give me about thirty minutes to do the math and then-.”

“I don’t think we have thirty minutes!” Steve points. “There!”

Bounding up the side of the hill Hulk in all his rage-filled glory targets them. Steve grapples for his shield and then remembers the nanobot one on his wrist. He activates it, yanks it off and flings it in one smooth motion. It hits Hulk squarely in the chest and knocks him over. The shield zooms right back to him, not naturally like his real shield, but as if the nanobots are programmed to zero in on him. He puts his wrist up and catches the shield easily. 

“Come on, we don’t have time,” Steve says, and Tony clasps a hand to him.

“I’m going to electrify your arm; you won’t be able to open your hand. It’ll help us stay together.”

“I don’t know Tony-.” He doesn’t get a chance to finish, the roar echoing through the valley stops him. Hulk scrambles to his feet again and stomps up the hill. The meter deep snow doesn’t deter him at all. 

He seizes Tony’s hand and the pulse of energy tingles, and it borders on hurting. Tony accelerates up the hill. Steve only realizes after a few horrified minutes that he’s using the repulsor of his other hands to warm the snow and ice. The melted slush makes it easier to get through the snow but also leaves a slippery path for them. 

The race up the hill becomes more ridiculous by the moment as they clamber and scale as if in slow motion for a movie. Tony skids and slips bringing down Steve with him. He falls smack in the muddy slush on the side where he had the injured rib. It takes the breath out of his lungs, but he recovers quickly, and half drags Tony back to his feet. Without protest Tony manages to trudge forward, blasting the snowy path. Steve cedes the lead to him and turns to face their pursuer. 

Fighting enemies is one thing, fighting friends – impossible. The image of Clint going down, his head rolling free of his body replays in Steve’s head. He shoves the pain away, accepts the guilt, and yells to Tony, “Let me go.”

“What?” 

Hulk lumbers up the side of the hill, the snow no barrier for him. 

“Let me go!” Steve orders. 

The electricity running through his arm ceases and he immediately turns, hits the clip on his cuff, and throws the shield with all due prejudice. It collides with Hulk’s head hard enough for him to wobble and then pitch backward. Steve watches as the shield disintegrates into the millions of nanobots only to lift in the air, reform, and fly to his arm clip. 

“Come on! Come on!” Tony cries. “While we have time!”

“No! I have to do this. You check out the mountain for the Passage. I’m right behind you!” 

Tony hesitates, but Steve leaves him behind to stalk down the hillside to the Hulk. It’s not suicide, but it’s damned near close. Hulk turning Steve into a pretzel becomes a distinct possibility. It’ll hurt, but probably won’t be permanent – or at least they think nothing in here can really hurt them. Why does it hurt at all? Why are there injuries at all. It’s a mystery he doesn’t have time to solve. He hears Tony cursing at him from behind, but troops down the path like a good soldier. At the very least, he can be a good soldier for Tony. If he can be nothing more to Tony than a pawn in a game, that will be enough.

“You know what really hurt about this whole thing,” Tony had said to him after the anger surrounding the truth about how his parents died dissipated. Steve stayed mute because Tony talking to him had become a rarity like an ancient clay pot. A beautiful treasure lost in time. 

He continued, “What really hurt is that I thought we were friends. I really did.”

That pierced through Steve’s heart so thoroughly he spoke before he thought, “You were. You are!”

“A friend wouldn’t have hidden it. A friend would have trusted me.”

The conversation had ended after that and Steve saw the writing on the wall, felt his fate sealed. He’d once dreamed about being something more to Tony, especially on those long winter nights as they discussed the formation of the Avengers Initiative – a real one. One that would be a partnership across the globe. It would grow, but without the partnership Steve truly dreamed about. Now, he plans to do what he can to ensure Tony’s safe passage to the next rim.

He needs to use the high ground to his advantage. Unfortunately, the sun’s behind Hulk so that means Steve’s staring below it’s rays but into the blinding reflection from the snow. In a ridiculous move, he balls up some snow and whips it straight at the Hulk, who stops, stupefied at the idiocy. He stomps like a child, bends down, and scoops up snow. Steve only has this moment to act. He musters all his strength and aims the shield at Hulk’s temple. He hurls it. It hits home too easily and a slice across his temple and brow appears. It only serves to piss him off. He howls at Steve and launches himself up the side of the foothill. 

With the shield particles back in the clip, Steve turns and races up the side of the mountain toward the ridge. He shoots the shield again, but this time misses. The Hulk growls and is within a breath of catching him. He stretches back to catch the stream of nanobots, but Hulk takes advantage of it, and grabs his arm. The nanobots collide with the raging monster and fall into a million pieces across the snowy landscape. Steve swing his right hand and punches Hulk in the eye, closes to the shield’s slice. He wishes to God that he could coax Bruce out, but this isn’t reality, and this isn’t really Hulk – this is a manifestation of Ultron’s demented brain. 

A hand wraps around his throat and Steve staggers backward, slipping on the snowy ice and falling to the ground. The impact jars him but Hulk’s hand never lets go. Steve grips Hulk’s wrist, trying but failing to get him to release. Hulk’s hot breath smells putrid, something that Steve doesn’t remember from reality and must be an added touch by Ultron. He coughs and gags at the stench, only making it harder to breathe with the tightening paw around his neck.

Battling Hulk one on one won’t work. Hulk is physically stronger than Steve – he knows this and so he needs to figure out a different strategy. He pounds on Hulk’s back with his free hand, but that only serves to rile him. The stench overwhelms Steve, and he gags again. Hulk takes advantage of the moment and slams Steve further into the cushion of snow. A small avalanche of snow falls into Steve’s face, blocking his sight and nose. He struggles to get it off by shaking his head, but Hulk presses him down into the pile of snow. Soon, breathing will become a problem. It’s already a problem, the narrow passageway he chokes in some air is barely enough.

Ultron’s playing with his food.

The whole Hulk’s body lays on top of Steve. The weight isn’t too much for Steve, but it compresses his movements and his ribs. He hits the shield clip down into the snow to activate it, but hits nothing hard enough to do it. He can’t collect the nanobots to activate them again. He kicks his feet, but Hulk returns with a shot to his balls. Steve sees stars and gasps; the agony spears through his gut. The cold of the snow on his face and seeping down his collar alleviate the urge to vomit. 

Hulk opens his mouth wide in an angry roar. In a fit of inspiration and desperation, Steve dives his hand in and seizes the monster’s tongue. He yanks with all his might and the Hulk goes wild. Before he can bite down on Steve, he jerks away his hand and punches the Hulk directly in the throat. It won’t down the beast but it’s enough to free Steve. He rolls away from the Hulk as the monster gurgles from the fist to his trachea. 

With no time to spare, Steve jumps to his feet and smacks the cuff clip to collect the nanobots and to activate the shield again. As expected Hulk recovers quickly and releases a howl to the winds that’s both terrifying and deafening. The clouds roll in response and for a second, Steve expects Thor to launch himself down from the sky. He doesn’t – it’s just Steve and Hulk fighting for dominance in the middle of Ultron’s play field.

He hears the sounds of crackling lightning again and his mind flips back to Thor. It’s not Thor – it’s Ultron tricking him, distracting him. But the shield is already in Steve’s hand and when Hulk pounds down at him, the shield deflects and resonates with a high pitched whine. Hulk stumbles back.

“Come on Bruce. You’re Bruce. Don’t let Ultron tell you any different,” Steve says – his breath coming out in raspy puffs. Logically he knows it isn’t Bruce, but Ultron must have added something of Bruce, otherwise the monster before him truly is a beast. Hulk throws another punch, but Steve easily matches it with the shield. He finds his footing in the deep snow and slashes low against Hulk’s bare legs. The shield slices cleanly, and blood cascades down Hulk’s thighs and calves. If he has any hope at all, Steve needs to hobble Hulk. 

He aims again for the shins and hits his target easily as Hulk falters from the sharp pain. He slides down the hillside and Steve wants to finish it off, but this is his chance. He needs to rejoin Tony, get up the side of the mountain and find the Passage. Presenting a distraction for Ultron only accomplishes so much. Steve clips the shield back and then rushes to the side of the mountain – as fast as he can considering the snow drifts. 

The wind gusts and pitches him over, but he recovers and finds his rhythm as he climbs up the slope. Tony’s nowhere in sight, which is either a good thing or a terrible thing – Steve decides to believe in the former. The latter is untenable. 

Hulk lumbers behind him, growling as he climbs. Ultron mustn’t have studied Hulk’s natural movements or abilities enough to know that Hulk wouldn’t climb. He’d launch and leap up the side of the mountain, overtaking Steve without a sweat. Ultron doesn’t know. An advantage that creaks open the door a tiny bit to Ultron’s weaknesses. He may be brilliant like Tony, but his inexperience lends them an advantage. 

Steve gets to a small ledge. It’s not much but it’s enough to use the shield. He swings it downward and tosses it with a low arc to glance at the side of Hulk’s temple again. It works like a charm. Hulk tumbles. Steve rustles up enough energy to race up the rocky ridge. The snow impedes his progress, and his thigh muscles burn with lactic acid. That almost never happens now with the serum – but his body’s reacting to the virtual dream. 

He slips.

A hand grabs his ankle, and he seizes the opportunity to slam the edge of the shield into Hulk’s face. The nanobots don’t disappoint. The edge penetrates the bone, cracking it and slices into the eye socket. Steve gags and pulls the shield away. He can’t do this. These are his friends. The image of Hawkeye haunts him again and he nearly loses his focus. An armored hand grabs him and drags him away. The Hulk topples down the jagged slope. 

“Come on, Captain. Stop messing around.” Tony hoists him onto his feet and Steve nods in thanks for the assist. “It’s up on top. I used the sensors. Pretty sure that’s it.” Steve goes to peer over his shoulder, but Tony stops him. “It’s not him. It’s Ultron. Leave it.”

Steve nods again; he’s speechless, muted by what he’s prepared to do. How he can so easily turn on his team. He shudders and stows the shield again. It’s time to get on with it. They need to get up the mountain. 

“I have rope.”

Tony glances back at him. 

Steve spies that Hulk won’t be put off for very long. “I’m not too sure we’ll have time to get a grappling hook put together.”

“I got the math now,” Tony says. The gauntlet on his left arm changes shape; the nanobots moving to a puddle of tiny tiles in the palm of his hand. “I have limited computer ability with the onboard AI. It’s nothing like I usually have with access to satellites. But I programmed into the armor a basic computer power.”

“Isn’t that just you?” Steve says as they continue to move up the side of the incline. He hears the slow groan of the Hulk behind them. They don’t have a lot of time. 

“Yes, kind of,” Tony says. He frowns. “It’s hard to explain. Let’s just say before we did this I put in a few subconscious suggestions-.”

“Like hypnotized yourself?”

“You know you interrupt a lot,” Tony says. “But yes, kind of the same concept. But it helps me compute a little faster. And here we are.” The nanobots form into a grappling hook. “Rope?” 

As Steve retrieves the rope from his backpack, the familiar roar of the Hulk echoes through the valley of snow. He wrestles the rope free and gives it to Tony. “Hurry.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice, Captain,” he replies. He knots the ropes onto the freshly made grappling hook. Once done he hands the entire ensemble over to Steve. “You’ll need to climb up first. I need to close up the armor. I can’t climb in it.”

“You’ll freeze!”

The Hulk screeches and the air cracks around them. 

“We don’t have a choice.” Tony hits the arc reactor and the entire armor drains into his chest plate and then into small circle of light. Steve yanks off his backpack and gives Tony his jacket.

“Don’t say anything, I’ll be sweating away considering I’m going to have to carry you on my back.”

“You said-.”

“I’ve seen you climb in our training sessions.” He shoves his backpack into Tony’s arms. “Get with it. We have to hustle.” 

One thing that Steve learned in the Army was how to tie a good knot. He had some Navy friends who would often challenge him, and they taught him at the same time. He quickly connects the rope to the grappling hook and then slings the rope around himself and Tony using his usual shield harness as a starting point. 

Steve turns his back to Tony. “Hop up and wrap your legs around me.”

_Climbing you like a tree isn’t something I thought we’d be doing now. Someday, but not now._ “Sure,” Tony says and looks away from Steve’s blush.

Steve clears his throat, not knowing if Tony understands that they are sharing thoughts. Or at least, he thinks they are – maybe Steve’s sanity is just breaking down in this virtual world. 

Tony hoists himself up onto Steve’s back as the Hulk howls. Without delay Steve secures Tony to him, using his bent knees as anchors. Taking the grappling hook, he aims then throws. The hook catches and slides into place.

“Christ, I always thought it was the shield that was so accurate. It’s been you all this time.”

“Even as a little guy, I had deadly aim,” Steve mutters and tests the grip of the hook. It’s good and he steps up into the craggy rocks of the mountainside. He begins the ascent. It’s painfully slow and that means Hulk will definitely catch up to them and probably try and pull them down. 

With a deep inhale, Steve reaches and pulls them up another few feet. “You have a weapon handy?”

“Only the nanobots. I can get a gauntlet on, but it means I have to let go with one hand.”

He grunts and then says, “Think you can do it and not fall?”

“Not falling is always the tricky part, but I can try.” Tony adjusts his hold and it nearly throws Steve off balance. He compensates quickly. 

“Ready?” Steve asks. He’d paused to give Tony a little more room to work. 

“Yeah. Go. He’s starting the climb up.”

Steve curses under his breath but continues. The slope grows steeper; the rocks sharper and more flaky. When Steve grabs hold, the rock shatters in his hand. “I’m going to have to use the rope completely to get us up. I can’t use the rocks anymore.”

“Got it.” 

It means that the rope has to hold them and that Steve balances the weight with his boots on the rock wall. He gets into position, the weight on his back forcing an extra effort but not an encumbrance. He pushes off and, hand over hand, heaves them up a few feet. 

The Hulk shrieks in an ungodly scream.

“Now would be good,” Steve says through clenched teeth as he stretches, grabs, and lifts them another arm’s length. 

Tony shifts to aim and Steve loses his balances, the rope swings wildly. He catches the wall, the sharp rocks slices into his gloves. More of the ragged wall crumbles away. Tony’s shot goes wide. He swears but Steve extends upward and grasps the rope. He drags them a few more feet. 

“Trying again,” Tony warns, and Steve knows this time to hold on tight as the gauntlet fires. 

A shocked moan cries out and Steve hurries to get them up the side of the ridge faster. He propels and hand over hand brings them another few feet. They’ve crossed at least half the distance when a jolt to the rope bashes them against the face of the cliff. The breath goes out of Steve, but he clings to the rope.

“He’s got the rope,” Tony reports. 

Steve figures as much. He only grunts in reply. He needs to get them the rest of the way. There’s no choice. 

The rope jostles and Steve hangs on as the Hulk bashes it against the rocks. Steve growls and adjusts his handgrip then braces against the rock wall with his feet and shoves off. It’s enough to swing the rope free – for now. With every bit of strength and power he possesses, Steve grapples up the rope. Thankfully his burden stays quiet and doesn’t throw him off balance. 

Steve knows the moment the Hulk grabs the rope again without Tony telling him. There’s a jerk and then wide arcing swing of the rope. The rope then bears weight and goes stiff under Steve’s hands. He swears again and then uses the tightness of the rope as an advantage. He doesn’t need to counterweight the movement; all he needs to do is focus on his climb. 

“He’s climbing the rope, and he’s gaining on us.” Tony grips him tightly. “Faster. You’re Captain America, you know.”

“This is not the Princess Bride and you’re not Princess Buttercup, you know,” Steve grits out. 

Tony snorts and buries his face in Steve’s hair. “God, you got the reference. It’s not even that funny, but I can’t – I can’t stop laughing.” He giggles with uncontrolled hiccups thrown in. 

“Tony, get yourself together. I need you-.” The wind abruptly picks up, so hard and fierce it knocks them into the jagged wall. Steve’s hands hit the sharp rocks and he cringes. 

“I’m going to have to shoot him,” Tony mutters as the laughter calms down. 

“Then do it. You said it yourself, he’s Ultron – not Bruce! Shit!” Hulk jolts the rope enough that Steve bangs against the side of the mountain again, only this time it’s face first. He blinks away the pain and feels the wet of blood drip down into his eyes. “Shoot him!”

Tony pivots and fires a series of aimed repulsor blasts. Steve hears the cry of the Hulk but then also feels the rope lose the tension as if a great weight suddenly disappeared. “Got it. Hit the rope. Dead on. He fell.”

“Good, good,” Steve pants. 

It’s only a few more yards. He can make it. The winds pick up as if to deny them their victory. The rope whips against the cliff, twisting and smashing. He hears Tony curse as he hits the razor-sharp rocks. Steve stretches out with one hand and manages to grab the cliff side. He steadies them. Even in the gloves his fingers are numb while his face burns with the cold. 

“You okay?” Steve asks, his voice hoarse as if he’s been screaming the enough time.

“Yeah, yeah. Just hope to hell that doesn’t happen again.”

“Are you hurt?” 

“Doesn’t matter, just go.”

Steve knows Tony’s right; they have no other choice. Steve has to keep on task. Climbing the mountain, getting to the Passage is their only goal. But there’s no guarantee that whatever happens in this virtual world won’t harm them somehow – physiologically or psychologically – in the real world. Hell, people are known to bully others online for the sadistic thrill of power – only to find out that there’s real harm to it. 

To keep his mind busy, Steve asks, “Ultron, he has to follow his own rules. Right?”

Tony takes a few seconds to answer and that scares Steve more than he wants to admit. “Mostly, yes.”

“Like he couldn’t make no gravity all the sudden?” It’s a strange dichotomy, how sweat drips down his back, yet the sensation in his face disappears from the cold. 

“No. I don’t. I don’t think so. He makes the world; he has to play by the rules too.”

“But he makes the rules,” Steve grunts out. He can see the edge of the cliff. They’re almost there. 

“The Passages are portals through to his innermost brain,” Tony pauses, heaves in a breath, and shivers against Steve. “Each rim is a defense. He built them in response to our invasion of his brain. The rules are simple because they have to be. He needs us to respond in a predictable way so he can defend and defeat us.”

“Well, that’s comforting.” He reaches and grabs the ridge of the plateau. “I’m going to pull us up now. Hang on tight.” Steve musters all his power and heaves in a swift but decisive motion. He’s able to leverage his weight and Tony’s to harness enough strength to get them over the ledge. Steve rolls onto his stomach and allows Tony a second before he gets to his knees and unbuckles and unties their makeshift carrier. 

Tony drops to the side and covers his face with his hands. He’s not the type to complain or show outward signs of pain. It alarms Steve.

“Hey, what’s going on?” 

Tony looks up; there’s a huge bruise from the right side of his forehead, down his temple, to his cheek. The cheek is especially swollen and ugly. 

“God, Tony. That looks broken.”

“Not in real life,” Tony mumbles and points to the stone arch. “Pretty sure that’s the Passage.”

Steve leans down and scopes up some snow. He gently tugs Tony’s hand away from his face and then places the snow into his palm, guiding it back to his face. “It doesn’t matter if it’s just here. It still hurts like hell.”

“Quiet, Captain, you might lose your tough guy exterior.” 

Steve frowns. He turns to see the arch.

“It looks like the one in the episode The City on the Edge of Tomorrow on the original Star Trek series.”

“What does that mean?” Steve asks. He’s always meant to watch Star Trek – it’s just that 70 years is a lot to catch up on. 

“It means we’re in for a load more of fun.” Tony steps up to the arch. “In the original story it emitted ripples in time, but I doubt that’s what Ultron is going to use it for, he’s not that creative.”

The arch pulses with a blue white light as if reprimand Tony for his assessment of Ultron. “Don’t you recognize me, my dear maker. I am the Guardian of Life.”

“In the original it was the Guardian of Forever,” Tony mocks. 

“Well forever is a long time, Maker mine, and you don’t have that. So I decided on something a little more descriptive.” 

Steve wants to interrogate it on what that means but Tony plows ahead. “Go on, give us your best shot.”

A misty blue shimmering light appears within the arch. It reminds Steve of the light that used to shine from Tony’s arc reactor. In some ways, Ultron cannot escape his creator. 

“The original episode had images from Earth’s history, this-.”

“Is all the hint you get,” the arch pulses.

“Ready?” Steve says.

“We have to step through at the same time.” Tony puts his hand out and captures Steve’s. “Let’s go.”

They step through together. Only Tony’s hand melts away and Steve’s alone, falling through the fog and darkness until he slams into the hard ground. There’s no light, no sound. Something strikes him in the back of the head and his last thought centers on Tony.

CHAPTER 4

Steve’s first thought as he regains consciousness is how fucking cold Ultron makes everything. He peels his eyes open and gathers his thoughts, forcing himself not to concentrate on the frigidity of his muscles. It’s impossible. His muscles ache and strain against bonds holding him upright. Chains link him to a ceiling, but it’s too dark to see how far above him. He shifts and tries to figure it out, but the chains sway and show him how very far down he is. 

He is down. 

In a well.

Because as his eyes adjust and he cranes his neck to see beyond his bound wrists, he spots the circle of light and the stones of a well walling him in a pit. He’s standing in about a foot of water. He sloshes about in it, the water smells and he retches at its putridity. His barefoot hits something on the stony floor and he searches it with his toes only to yank away from the skull. This isn’t a well; it’s a torture chamber. He’s beginning to realize how fucking mad Ultron truly is. It dawns on him he’s missing one very important piece.

“Tony? Tony!” 

Only the echo of the well answers him. His eyes adjust to the low lighting and he twists on the chain looking for any sign of Tony. A gut churning fear that Tony’s below the water, dead already, hits him and starts to search with his legs and feet – finding nothing but bones. Part of him knows this is all virtual, Tony’s okay. There’s no need to worry. If he’s not in the rim then he must have been booted out of the connection. He’ll get back in soon enough. Of course, Steve has no idea if it means Tony has to go through the first two rims alone again. 

He swears. This all just gets worse and worse. He thought searching the web for Ultron would be easy – this is all a little too stressful and anxiety producing (not to mention painful) than he bargained for. He needs to assess the situation and get out of it.

Ultron’s playing with his food again. That much is obvious. His food is brain games, and what other way to play with Steve than to make it a physical chore. Everyone always thinks that Steve is nothing but the muscle of the group anyhow. First things, first, he needs to climb out of this well and find out what Ultron has cooked up for him now. With a swing of his legs he manages to leverage his feet against the wall. Gripping the chains holding him in the well, Steve begins his ascent. It’s easier than simply climbing the chain. The wall is slippery but easy enough to balance against with his barefeet. His muscles strain against the pull and heave of the climb. It makes him wonder at the virtual reality. How everything feels so real but at the same time still oozes with non-reality. The periphery blurs out when he’s not looking at it directly. It’s clear that Ultron may have invaded the internet, but it overwhelms his capacity. Steve files that away for use later as he grits his teeth.

The chains clang and the air chills. Nothing in this place – these rims of Ultron’s mind – is comfortable. He shouldn’t be surprised considering Ultron is a cold and nature killer. He shivers. What does that mean for Tony? Who Tony is? Steve refuses to confront any reality where Tony might be a villain. He’s not. There’s no way around it. Not in his mind. 

But.

His mind, his heart leans toward a gentle softness for Tony. There’s no lie in that fact. For years now he’s watched Tony’s life from afar, knowing all too well that he would only always be an outside player. Someone Tony worked with – and oh how that stung. He longed for the few days he spent with Tony going over the teams’ abilities, the financials, the strategies. Late into the night they would work. Every now and again, he’d find himself drifting into a fantasy where they were together working as a team – partners in life. He’d imagine reaching over and grabbing Tony’s hand. Or better yet when Tony ambled over for his fourth cup of coffee, Steve followed him and came up behind to wrap his arms around him in an embrace – that would lead to more. But then he would snap out of it and realize that was all a pipe dream. 

His mind sees Tony only in a best light. He’s biased. He admits it. What else would he expect considering he loves Tony – the admission stuns him. He loses his grasp of the chains and slides down, the rough metal raking over his palms. His feet struggle for purchase. He grabs the chains and grounds out a scream to hold onto the slimy surface of the links. The chain swings dangerously and he bashes his shoulder against the wall. He tells himself there’s no real physical damage. Not here in this rim, not in any of the others. But maybe there’s a deeper damage – one seeded from realization of a love he can never have.

Like Peggy before Tony.

Steve muffles a welling sob. He can’t breakdown in the middle of a mission. This is his life. The mission is his life. Maybe Ultron was right in a way. A soldier without a war is rudderless. He laughs without mirth at his own mixing of metaphors. Breathing in, he steadies himself and then focuses on the task at hand. He throws away any doubts and clenches his teeth as he places one hand over the other, walking up the wall as he climbs. Without another incident, he flips over the edge of the stone well and falls onto the stony ground. Once again, it’s cold. Ultron’s brain is cold and deceitful – that’s why. It brings him back to his thoughts about Ultron and who he is.

Is he Tony’s paramour? Alter ego?

There’s no sense in trying to figure that out. Steve needs to find his weakness, not Tony’s weakness. Besides, he already knows Tony’s weakness. It’s Pepper. Any time anything is about her, Tony always rides the waves back to her, regardless of the storm he might encounter. It’s not his business at all, but he never thought she was a good match for Tony. 

He sits up, rolling his shoulders and then examines the manacles around his wrists. The chain might have been helpful, but now it’s a hinderance. He tests it.

“No need, Captain.”

Steve jolts to find Loki standing in full regalia behind him. His horned helmet glitters in what looks like early morning fog. The dew drops glisten as if in some mocking poetry. He’s holding his staff – the same staff they harvested the mind stone. He tilts the staff, and the chains fall free. Part of his mind rebels at the sight, the other part remains curious. Loki had always been a strange villain of the story if Steve had to confess. A character of mischief but cruelty all the same. 

“And what are you doing here?” Inwardly, Steve reminds himself that this isn’t Loki, but another test by Ultron. Why the AI picked Loki spikes his interest, yet it’s dulled by the fact Tony’s still missing.

“Oh Captain, why do you think I’m here?” Loki curves his thin lips into an insidious smile. “To play with you, of course.”

As he speaks the fog begins to lift and he points at the far away cliff. “That is where you want to go, dear Captain. I’m not stupid. I know what your ultimate goal is.” Loki circles around Steve and as he does the ground around them, the concrete shifts and changes like bricks from a child’s building set. Walls and tunnels are built. The grinding of rock and stone against one another dins the sounds of anything else. Once it is done only dust and grit fill the air. Steve coughs. He closes his eyes for a few seconds trying to settle the pixelated aspect of the world around him.

“In due course, Captain, you will find your way through the maze.”

“I will, will I?” Steve asks as he climbs to his feet. He still has the cuff for the shield Tony made him. 

“You will if you ever want to see your dear Iron Man again,” Loki smirks. His eyebrows arch. “Tell me dear Captain, does he know what sits so deeply in your heart?”

Steve stiffens but stops himself from launching at Loki. He needs information, he needs time. He needs to find Tony. “Where is he?”

“All in due time, Captain. First answer my question. Does he know?” Loki lurks around him like a crow around a dying animal.

“That’s not any of your business.” Steve cringes. That’s as much as admitting his feelings for Tony. 

“Very well, Captain, then you’ll end your days trying to get out of an oubliette. He lifts the staff and aims it at Steve.

He’s not ready to concede, but he still needs information. He raises his hands and says, “No. He knows nothing about it.”

Loki lowers the staff. “And why not? You lose time, dear Captain. Time ticks onward. At any moment you may very well lose your life, or he may lose his. And here you hide away, what’s dearest in your heart.”

“I doubt you would understand-.”

“Wouldn’t I, though?” Loki says and his tone is wistful and light. His eyes drift faraway and for a moment, Steve swears he sees Ultron’s red eyes in shadow, flickering as if muddied with pain. 

Steve is not going to feel empathy for a mad robot. “I don’t think you can understand. You don’t get the depth of human feeling or circumstances. You don’t understand empathy or hope or desire or love.” He doesn’t mean to list it all, but there’s no stopping him now. “You don’t get to stand here and pretend you’re a living being. That you know what it is to long and yearn for someone that you’ll never have. You don’t get to pretend. You might think your Pinocchio, but you’re not a toy, or anyone’s puppet. You’ve always been a warped machine gone wrong.”

Loki spins around, his cloak whipping the air with the movement. He looks away, beyond the newly constructed maze toward the cliff. “Find your way through the maze, Captain. Find the way through the maze and maybe, just maybe, my maker won’t suffer the fate he deserves.” He glances over his shoulder at Steve – but he’s no longer the god of mischief. His robotic features dance over the remnants of Loki’s flesh. “Good luck, Captain. I’ll see you on the other side.” Loki/Utron disappears in a scattering of green light reminiscent of fireflies. 

Steve grimaces. Ultron’s not keeping up the charade, not like before so he must be getting nervous. Or whatever the equivalent might be for an artificial intelligence. It must be based on algorithms and scenarios evaluation. The probability of Steve and Tony getting out of this thing and shutting Ultron down has to be increasing to have the AI showing his face. He’s trying to off balance Steve. The cat and mouse game of hiding Tony on this rim shows it. Steve’s sure of it. He wishes Tony was here.

But he needs to play the game in order to progress, especially if the end of the maze means the Passage to the next level. With nothing to collect since Tony had his backpack and he’s fairly certain he cannot conjure a new one, Steve sets about trying to solve the maze. The first thing is to scale the wall and just walk the top of the maze to get where he needs to go. Sure, it’s cheating, but controlling Ultron means outsmarting him. 

With a great heave, Steve leaps toward the stone wall of the entrance to the maze only to be thrown backward. The electric shock shivers through him and he gasps for breath, trying hard not to vomit from the pain. The world shutters around him and he gags, throwing himself to the side. He vomits bile and tastes the acidity in his mouth. A coppery tang follows it. He gets to his hands and knees and pants through the pain. It’s not a normal shock; he’s been hit before more than once. This feels more like a straight repulsor fire dialed directly into his heart. He grunts and sways back and forth trying to ease the ache in his chest. Finally, he tumbles down to sit and curls his arms around his knees.

“Tony,” he mutters as tears burn his eyes. “Where are you?” 

There’s no answer even though he’d hoped that the connection he believes they have through the virtual linkage would relay the information. He feels all of his 98 pounds even though he’s still the same super serumed soldier. He needs to get moving. Loki said something about time. There’s no time. With every tick of the clock, Ultron learns how to avoid them, how to defeat them. Steve climbs to his feet, wobbly and dizzy. Leaning against the wall isn’t an option so he squares his shoulders and marches forward into the maze. 

Depending on his inherent sense of direction, Steve choses each turn and path by designating the destination – Tony- as North. There’s no real sun or daylight just a misty fog. 

He wishes he had water or something to drink. The electrical shock left him parched and shaken. No pack, no water. He hopes Tony still has his pack, but who knows what happened. Maybe Ultron wants to watch his rat in a maze with no reward at the end. That rankles him and he ends up turned around and angry with himself that he ended up lost in thought. He needs to pay attention in order to map out the twists and turns of the maze which so far consists of dull gray rock walls with a stony path. Water puddles on the path making the idea of touching the wall even less appealing. 

Steve finds his way back to a bend in the maze and then presses the cuff of his shield. It activates. Inhaling once to summons the courage, he exhales and then slams his technological wonder of a shield into the rock wall. Sparks fly, sizzling but he’s not harmed. On the other hand, the wall bares the scorch marks of the impact. A trail, like Hazel and Gretel. Hopefully there’s no creatures in the maze that might consume burns in stones.

Anytime he’s about to make a decision on which way to go, he uses the shield, hitting hard and fast and then moving on. Steve’s buoyed by his progress and his step is a little lighter. The tingling and numbness from the shock wears off as he turns the corner only to come upon another occupant of the maze.

The familiar figure looks up from his hunched position. He smiles that smirk Steve’s known for a thousand years. “Bout time you showed up. Thought you were just going to leave me here, like you did when I fell.”

“Buck.”

_It’s just a mind game._

The words whisper in his ears, but he only hears the din of his heart throbbing deeply and rapidly in his chest. He stumbles a little as he walks forward into the open space within the maze. Bucky sits on a rock with a knife in his hand. He’s whittling something. His back is toward Steve. A step forward and Steve could reach out his hand and touch him. 

“You going to sit down and have a smoke?” Suddenly the scene changes, the knife disappears, the whittled stick flakes away. Bucky has a pack of cigarettes in his hand. The Italian brand that he always griped about – how did Ultron know about it? That small detail? “Come on smoke with me, you jerk.”

Steve swallows hard, the acid taste back in his mouth again. He picks out a cigarette, his hands tremble. Buck has a match lit and Steve leans down to the flame. It’s warm against his face and something smooth and wonderful comes over him – remembrances of times past. He finds himself settling in next to Bucky as he inhales the intoxicating smoke. 

Of course, Steve never smoked before Project Rebirth, but everyone else did. His doctor told him to try it – it would help his asthma, train his lungs, relax him. It did the opposite. Once he went through Project Rebirth, the world opened up and he accepted cigarettes as if they were candy bars. His lungs were beyond reproach, nicotine and tar could do nothing to sully them. As he sat there with Bucky, Steve inhales deeply and lets the smoke swirl around him.

“You know, I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Buck.” Logically Steve knows he’s talking to a phantom, but stopping, walking away – he can’t do it. “I want to find you. Bring you home.”

“There’s no bringing me home, Stevie. You think there’s good, but it’s all decayed away.”

Steve laughs but it holds no joy. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.” He taps the ash off his cigarette and takes another drag. “You could come home. I want to find you, bring you back. Help you heal.”

Bucky remains silent for a while. The distant sound of water dripping interrupts the quiet. Bucky looks at Steve, his blue eyes obscenely real. “What if there’s no saving me? What if part of the problem lies in the fact, I’m not the person you think I am. Not anymore. Maybe I never was.”

“That’s not true,” Steve hisses. In some ways it’s like talking to his own conscience. That little niggling voice in the back of his head that murmurs fears and worries about truths he never wants to face. “I knew you, Buck. I know you. You’re a good man. You always were.”

Buck smirks at him, in that way he always did – a half crooked smile with those charming blue eyes. “I heard you’re sweet on Stark.”

Steve pulls a drag on his cigarette as if it’s done him wrong and looks away from Bucky. This isn’t his friend – it’s Ultron. 

“Sweet like a sissy-boy. That’s what I heard. You want that up your ass. I always thought there was something wrong with you. Wanting to prove yourself, not really looking at the girls-.”

“Shut up,” he says, and he drops the cigarette in the puddle to extinguish it. “You’re not going to bait me, not with my friend’s face. I’m not going to listen to you.” He stands up, determined to walk away, determined to not hear Bucky’s voice belittle him.

“You really think, I wouldn’t say this to you? You really think that in the 40s I’d’ve accepted you?” Bucky stands too. His eyes are crystal like warm Caribbean waters. Steve had thought at one time he could have loved Bucky – not just as a friend or a brother. He’d always known it was never going to be – he recalls the past – how groups of soldiers would mock and deride homosexuals. He’d always told his Howling Commandoes to act with some integrity and stop. They thought it was because he was trying to be a good Captain. He told himself it was.

He lied.

“You think that sweet ass of Stark’s could be yours?” Bucky snickers. “He would eat you alive. You got nothing but a few dark alley hook ups and quick one nighters. You think he wants someone as inexperienced or as filthy as you?” 

Steve turns away. It’s time to get back to the maze. This was a distraction – a trap set by Ultron to stall him. He starts away.

Before he gets more than two feet, Bucky calls, “Why didn’t you come back for me?”

If Ultron physically speared him through the heart it would hurt less. He licks his lips and fists his hands, trying to steady himself. “You’re not him.”

“How do you know? How do you know I haven’t found him and know everything about him?” 

The words startle Steve, surprise him enough that he’s across the small confined area in seconds and has Bucky’s shirt twisted in his hands and his back shoved up against the wet stone wall. It never flickers with electricity. He pushes his arm into the doppelganger’s throat. “Tell me what you know.”

“You’ll never find him,” Bucky says. “He doesn’t want you to find him. He hates you. He collects information on you because he wants to assassinate you. I might give him the clue to get to you. I might do it myself and serve him your head on a platter.”

“You know it’s funny you think you have the upper hand since my arm is at your throat,” Steve growls at him.

Bucky smirks and then the whole wall crackles with electricity; voltage sears through Steve and it launches him backward until he impacts with the opposite wall. He rolls away from it almost immediately. His vision blanks out and his limbs throb with the aftereffects of the jolt like feeling the waves of the ocean long after departing the boat. He shudders and blinks, but he’s too late as Bucky leaps at him, smashing a fist to his face, his fist feels the same as it did when they were on the doomed Helicarrier. His cheekbone fractures and the rage of pain runs through him bringing him clarity. 

Instead of surrendering, Steve rams his fist straight into the side of Bucky’s neck. The doppelganger staggers away from his hunched position over Steve. Reluctance swept away, Steve surges to his feet. He forgets the pain blossoming like a burning sun over the side of his face. His fists collide with Bucky’s throat, his face, his ribs. In a fury he activates the shield and rams it into the imposter’s chest. Bucky spits up blood into Steve’s face, splatter over his mouth and nose. All Steve smells is copper and dust and cold taste of death. He falls back and tries to get to his feet. A dozen people appear at the different entrances their little cavern in the maze. They’re in various states of decay and the putrid stench fills the enclosed space. Steve’s eyes water at the sting of the air. He puts the back of his hand of his mouth and nostrils. His cheekbone pounds in agony. Regardless of how many times he says it’s all in his head, his body rebels and tells him otherwise. 

“Wha-?” Steve manages.

Bucky stumbles to his feet, hovering over a slumped Steve. “They’re all the people you killed. All of them. Kids, women, old men. All of them. See them, Stevie. See that one – he followed you into the battle when you brought SHIELD down, but he died because of his faith in you. See that boy, he died because of your foolishness during the Chitauri invasion – thinking a band of six could go against an army.” Bucky wipes the blood away from his face. “You always were arrogant, stubborn, and stupid. What did Ultron say to you?” Bucky smiles, his teeth are stained with the blood Steve put there. “ ‘God's righteous man. Pretending you could live without a war.’ Always looking to force more death so you can feel important. Why Stevie? Why?”

Steve shakes his head. He staggers to climb to his feet again. The shield still activated, still bloody. “Not, not true.” 

“Tell me, Stevie, what’s true? What else but death do you have in your life. What else is good?”

He immediately thinks of Tony – he can’t help it. His life, though lonely, always centers on Tony. He denies revealing it to Ultron’s portrayal of Bucky.

“You think he would want you? You’re death. All he’s ever wanted all his life was to escape death.” Bucky licks his lips. “And now what do you have left but being so righteous people despise you. He despises you.”

Steve hangs his hand and then puts his hands on his hips. He lifts his head and gaze, staring at Bucky. “You almost had me. You almost did, but you don’t know Tony quite as well as you think. He doesn’t despise me. He might be angrier than hell at me, but he doesn’t hate me.” 

Bucky snarls at him and then the whole of crew of zombies attack Steve. Without thought, he dashes down a pathway in the maze, not having time to mark his way. He turns and cuts toward the left and then runs through the long tunnel to the next crossroads, making a split second decision toward the right. These aren’t zombies at all, they’re keeping up with Steve, nearly over taking him. The memory of fighting Ultron’s crew of killer robots pops up. It’s all about overwhelming the enemy with Ultron – there’s no real plan. No real strategy. It’s a realization Steve can use, but right now, he doesn’t have the time to exploit it with the gang on his heels. He looks up at the walls. How far of a leap is it? Could he make the rim? Is the top electrified as well? Can he just get over the wall? 

Steve feels the heat of his pursuers, hears Bucky’s laughter from amongst the crowd. Time ticks and he needs to get to Tony, there’s no other way. Through the maze, he’s hopelessly lost in the midst of turns and twists. He might be able to reconstruct it with his eidetic memory, but he needs time and the only thing he has is his muscles and strength.

_God's righteous man. Pretending you could live without a war._

Steve growls and shuns the voice mocking him in his head. His muscles strain and his face feels the pounding warmth of pain and a new flush of agony. He eyes the next crossroads – a left and right turn – he needs to jump over the wall. It’s at least ten feet high. Adding a bounce to his stride he preps and then heaves, leaping high and clearing the wall easily, rolling to stop on the other side but then colliding with a metal boot.

He looks up to see Tony decked out fully in the Iron Man armor, standing over him. “It’s good you could join me, Cap.”

“Tony, I-.” He stops and accepts the gauntleted hand offered to him. “I didn’t think I would find you.”

“Little faith, dear Captain. Little faith.” Tony says. He claps Steve on the back – a little more harshly than he’s prepared for so he staggers, taking a step forward to right himself. “Careful there, Captain.”

Steve muffles his reply. He studies Tony, still clad in the armor. No backpacks at all. “You lost the backpacks?”

The cold and blank face of the helmet turns to Steve. “Backpacks?” He pauses. “Ah, yes. I left them at the exit.”

“You already got through the maze?” Steve asks. He’d thought Ultron told him that Tony was stuck somewhere at the end of the maze, that Steve had to rescue him. “How did you get free?” Maybe he’d been making assumptions based on what Ultron said. He ranks his brain. No. Ultron did not say Tony had the means to free himself. “You had the armor all this time?”

Tony stops in his tracks. “Oh Captain, this would have been so much more fun if you hadn’t used that shriveled raisin of a brain of yours.” The armor pivots and the right hand repulsor fires, but Steve snaps the shield up in time to ward it off. 

Cursing under his breath, Steve dodges the next series of shots and swivels to the side, getting a wall to the next path between him and his nemesis. He grits his teeth and takes off down the open air tunnel, trying to gage the direction. Ultron’s been smart though, there’s no angle to any light. It’s just above and that’s it. He can’t tell north or south. He can’t stop to figure out whether or not he’s headed toward the exit and to Tony or not. A bolt of repulsor fire hits the wall next to him and he scrambles out of the way as a cascade of stone and mortar rains down. 

_Tony!_ Screaming in his head doesn’t have the effect he hoped. 

Racing down the nearest trail, Steve longs for his backpack. He’d have more options for defense and offense. Another shot comes dangerous close to his head, the spray of the stone peppers his already injured cheek and he nearly loses his footing due to the pain. He battles for balance and throws the shield at the same time, knowing full well it won’t hit its target. The Iron Man armor bashes the shield away and blasts Steve with the unibeam. It hits him full in the gut, stealing his breath and hurling him into the wall. The answering electric shock doubles the pain, and he tastes blood in his mouth. He collapses to the ground, hand pinned to his bleeding gut. The Iron Man armor stalks him. His vision blinks in and out. He fights for consciousness. Ultron raises his arm and Steve knows nothing more.

CHAPTER 5  
**INTERLUDE**  
“You fucking put me back in there or I swear I will rip the interface out myself!” Tony screams at Cho. She startles back from his vehemence but she’s not backing down.

“Your heart won’t take it anymore. If you go in there, you’ll very likely go into cardiac arrest,” Cho replies. “Captain Rogers has a much better chance of surviving than you do.”

“Doesn’t seem that way to me,” Sam mutters in the corner of the infirmary room.

The room buzzes with noises from the multiple monitors set around Steve’s bed like a wall built to protect him. Most of the monitors are squealing with different warnings. The heart monitor reads accelerated rates with increased indications of dire consequences, the pulmonary monitor cautions of lower oxygen intake while the in time biochemistry monitor sampling Steve’s blood shows a flight or fight response in action. 

The one monitor that piques Tony’s attention is the one hooked up to the interface. The one that he’s also supposed to be connected to, but at that moment is not. The interface scrolls a long list of code that only a few people can read – Tony is one of them. Scott is another – but Scott’s not in the room. Natasha could probably read it as well, but she keeps her abilities and talents to herself so Tony’s never actually sure what she can and cannot do. Sam’s still a mystery to Tony, so he’s out of the picture. 

“You see this monitor,” Tony says as he yanks off the wires hooking him up to an electrocardiogram. He points to the transparent monitor hanging over Steve’s head. “This monitor is the one you have to worry about and right now, sister, it’s getting pretty dicey in there.”

Cho cringes at the thrown out nickname. “I’m not your sister and I know how to read your interface monitor. If the threat to the Captain gets into the red zone, we’ll pull him out.”

Tony runs his hands through his hair. “No. No you won’t pull him out. That’s not the intention of any of this. If we don’t isolate and destroy Ultron now, we’ll never get it done.”

“Then maybe you two fools should have let Vision do it in the first place,” Sam says. His dark eyes are steely and possessive. 

“Vision couldn’t do it. His matrix is too much like Ultron’s. It could have corrupted him irreparably.”

“You mean it could have turned him into a super Ultron,” Sam says. Before Tony can protest further, Sam stops him. “Listen. Doctor Cho did what she did because your heart rhythm was erratic at best. We really did think you were going to check out on us.”

“That’s what I told him,” Cho says as she rounds Steve’s bed to tap on one of the screens. She obviously thinks Tony’s one of those guys who is going to mansplain everything to her. He hates that – but it’s probably true. In his defense, he always assumes the people in the room cannot follow him and he must explain everything to everyone. He needs to stop that with the company he currently keeps. 

He puts up his hands. “Okay, okay. But I need to be there. He’s counting on me.” For the first time, Tony realizes it’s true. He does need to be there, but it’s not because of Steve – not at all. He needs to be there to protect him. Who knows what mind tricks Ultron’s using? Hell, they thought Vision had shut Ultron out of the internet – Ultron even said it had happened, but then again, Ultron’s intentions and his actions rarely meshed. The thought of Steve braving Ultron’s madness alone terrifies Tony – and that itself hurts deep in his chest where it surprises him.

“He may be counting on you, but the truth is you’re in no condition-.” Cho turns away from him, ignoring the pleading look Tony plastered on his face. “If we need to, we bring him out, like I said.”

Tony wants to reach out and grab her, but he uses his voice instead. Pepper would be proud. “You do this, Ultron wins. You get that right? We have Ross coming down on our heads soon enough, if we don’t wipe Ultron from existence then we lose. Not only the Avengers but all of us. Everyone. Seriously, Doctor, do you think I matter that much that my life should balance out the lives of billions of people?”

Cho stands there with her face turn to the screen she’s moved in front of her. She doesn’t focus on him, but he can tell she’s blanked out from the data she’s supposed to be reading. She taps the screen with her thumb. “You could die.”

“You want me to do it?” Sam pipes in, but another voice answers him as Natasha makes her appearance.

“Stark isn’t going to let you do it. He’s not going to let anyone do it.” Her gaze steadies on him, powerful and penetrating. She crosses her arms, closing him off at the same time she peels him open and exposes him. “Not anyone else.”

“Well, we need to do something. He’s not in good shape. That constant stress can’t be good for him?” Sam directs the last at Cho who only nods.

“Can you two leave us for a minute?” Natasha asks. Both Sam and Cho share looks and then silently decide to follow her request. 

Before Cho leaves, she lifts a finger and says, “Not long. Five minutes, that’s all.”

“I won’t need five minutes,” Natasha says as Cho steps out of the room, following Sam. When she faces Tony again, her pouty mouth thins but her eyes soften. She wastes no time in laying him bare. “You need to cut the crap, Tony, and go in there and get your boy.”

“What? That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to get back to Cap-.”

“To Steve. He’s yours, he’s always been yours.” Natasha says and she leans against the edge of Steve’s bed, not looking at him. “Why do you think he’s alone? He could have anyone he wants. But he buries himself in his work and lives a solitary life. He calls a compound home. He’s waiting right now, but he’s always been waiting.”

“He lied to me,” Tony says, and he knows that he grasps at the lowest straws he can to disprove her theory. 

“A sin of omission. But then again, so did I,” Natasha says. She lifts her shoulder in a shrug. “What does it matter? Why does it matter. What matters is that you need to be honest with yourself. You’re not mad at him because his friend killed your parents and he kept it from you. You’re mad at him because he protected his friend. You’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.” His heart speeds up and he’s glad the heart monitors aren’t connected anymore. “I’m not.”

“Well, the sooner you admit it, I’d bet the sooner you’ll find a way to work together to stop Ultron.” 

“You’re delusional,” Tony says and again it’s a strike that doesn’t hit its target with her. Rarely anything does. 

“As you say.” She walks toward the door. “Think about it. What does Ultron not understand? What does he want? Why does he hate humans so much?” She offers him a sad smile. “You know why he kidnapped me?” She places her hand on the doorknob. She doesn’t wait for him to answer. “Because he wanted to share with someone. He had no one else. Think about that.”

He nods. She leaves and he feels all of 2 feet tall. When Cho re-enters the room, she accepts his argument to hook him back up. Her face remains impassive, but her eyes show only concern as Tony drifts away.

**oOo**

A large animal leans on his chest, gnaws at it and he squirms and fights to get free. His arms feel like lead and Steve batters at the bulk of the beast with flailing arms unable to push the animal off him. The gaping hole in his gut burns. Tears stream down his face and he hears someone crying, someone weeping for the pain. It’s him. Of course, it’s him. He forces his hand into a fist and beats on the hulking form of the beast. His efforts are to no avail. The thing devours him. He wants it to rip his throat out to silence the pathetic noises escaping him. 

In a last effort, he heaves once to get the thing off him, but a press of a paw pushes him back and pins him down. “Shush now. I’m trying to staunch the blood.”

The beast speaks. 

Steve moves to formulate words but only a gnarl mutated whine bubbles from his throat. 

“Like I said, you need to stay still. And be quiet. I got us a hiding place, but I have no idea where we are right now. Who might be lurking, so to speak.”

“To-Tony?” Steve murmurs. It hurts. Everything hurts.

“Finally. You’ve been beating at me for the last half hour. I thought you were dead when I found you. But then Ultron showed up to berate me and do the evil villain monologue thing.”

The fog of pain slowly lifts and Steve squints his eyes at Tony, who bends over him with a thick wade of gauze to his gut. The pressure hurts but it’s not as bad as the fractured cheek. “Wha-?” His ability to form words fails him. 

“I supposing this is a unibeam burn,” Tony says as keeps his eyes away from Steve’s gaze. He keeps his hands deftly busy as he speaks. “Was it the armor or did he just zap you with something else that was similar.”

Steve bites back his answer; Tony doesn’t need to know – doesn’t need the guilt.

“So, the armor,” Tony concludes and curses under his breath. “Should have known better. Ultron had access to everything I built before he decided to rebel against good old pops. He must have stolen that too; it’s what I would have done.”

“No. No. It’s not,” Steve gulps out between the waves of pain spiking through him. If it’s all in his brain, why the hell does it hurt so much?

“Because of the rules of the game,” Tony answers as if he wasn’t actually responding to something Steve just thought. “Like I said, Ultron has certain rules in his world and one of them is that injuries cause pain. Even if you want to disbelieve it, you can’t. Not really. Because your brain will override it every time.”

Steve pushes up, trying to at least get a view of where they are. Tony tries his best to stop him, but he fails. Instead he adjusts Steve into a semi-reclined position. “Where?” His words are breathy, hardly whispered.

“In an old Soviet missile silo as far as I can tell,” Tony says. “Once I got you out of the maze and into the Passage, then we dropped out in the middle of more fucking snow. I found this place and hacked my way in.”

Steve frowns. It makes no sense. Why here? Why now? And then he studies Tony – is it really Tony? Could it be another mirage of Ultron’s? Steve leans over and grunts for the effort, but he reaches out all the same, reaches out to touch Tony. “You?”

“Yeah, it’s really me. And to prove it to you, we both figured out where Loki was going to be during the Chitauri attack when we were talking about Coulson’s death. Pretty sure my bastard robot son doesn’t know that.”

Steve eases back, satisfied. He touches his cheek and hisses. 

“Let me see that,” Tony says and lightly fingers the side of Steve’s cheek. “I have some nanobots I’m going to spray on it. Close your eyes.”

Steve follows direction and hears Tony shift around to his injured side. “This is going to sting a little at first.” 

A pinch and then chilled grains pepper his cheek. It’s instantly cooling and numbs Steve’s face. He opens his eyes as Tony finishes. “How’s that feel?”

“Cold.” He notices the bruises Tony once harbored are completely gone.

“Apparently when I returned to the game, I was in full health.” Once again, Tony responds to something Steve thought. “Good that the nanobots are cold, it will relieve some of the swelling I would think.” Tony sits back. He looks haggard, tired, about to give up. 

Even though he wants to comfort Tony, no energy to move stifles his attempt. He slowly sinks into oblivion again. When he wakes Tony’s standing near the entrance way to their little hideout. Steve’s not sure where – he can’t remember. He thinks they talked about it. He thinks Tony might have answered. As he stares silently at Tony in his partial armor, facing away from him, Steve realizes he’s clutching something in his right hand. He opens it to find his compass – the one with Peggy’s photograph. A weak smile crosses his lips. The Smithsonian had salvaged it, long before they found him. Who knows how the photo or the compass survived? He conjured it into his backpack, thinking they might need a compass. But he supposes that was a silly assumption in Ultron’s game. He didn’t have his backpack the last he recalled.

“Yeah, you were clawing at the backpacks looking for it,” Tony says as he walks back to Steve’s side. His eyes are hollow, lost, almost desperate in their expression. “She’s still your girl, huh?”

Steve snaps the compass closed. “She was. She had a family, a life. It’s just my past, now.”

“It’s what you wished you could have had.”

“Once – a long time ago,” Steve admits. “Not anymore.” There’s no harm in telling the truth, but there must be because he witnesses how deflated Tony becomes at his words. 

“And now?” Tony asks as he settles down next to Steve, his hands busy again checking the bandages on his abdomen. “What do you wish you could have now?”

Steve swallows down the bitter pill of reality. It’s funny really – because he’s literally in Ultron’s matrix. “Like I said before the Avengers’ compound – that’s home. For me.”

“That’s a job, not a home, Steve.” Tony pulls away the bandage. “Ultron’s knowledge of your healing abilities must be a little less informed. He’s got you healing at an accelerated rate, maybe 6, 8 times faster than a typical human.” 

“That’s good news,” Steve says. 

“Or he wants you well enough to play the game, again.” Tony retrieves a gauze pad and blots at Steve’s gut again. There’s little blood on the stark white gauze. “Still tender?”

Steve grimaces. “Yeah. A little. How can Ultron decide how I heal? Shouldn’t that be my perception?” 

Tony shrugs. “Yeah. Yeah, but you’ve been out of it, so the rules of the world come into play. I would think. Or maybe you have a tilted perception that you heal faster than you really do. I wouldn’t be surprised. You do have a tendency to come out of battles beat up and limping and telling everyone that you’re fine when you obviously are anything but.” 

“That’s different.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s the real world, for one.” Steve says and bats Tony’s hand away to examine the burn on his abdomen. It is fairly well healed. Far too quickly – and with that thought the pain ratchets up a degree. He hisses in response. “Shit. You might be right. It might be me.”

“I’m never wrong,” Tony says, and his gaze falls on the compass still cradled in Steve’s other hand. “She meant the world to you, didn’t she?”

Steve notices the sallow expression on Tony’s face, but his words are soft and not bitter. “She did. Once. Like I said.” He flips the compass open. “Always was surprised the photograph survived.”

Tony shrugs again and looks toward the door in the cramped storage room. “I did that. Long time ago.” He keeps his eyes averted from Steve. “Used to run into Dad’s office and steal it from his drawer. He found it shortly after he found the Tesseract. Said you wouldn’t be anywhere without it, so he knew you’d be close. Of course, he never found you.” He sighs and then rummages through his bag, not taking anything out of it. “I’d steal it and pretend to be you. The photo was long since gone. I finally found one just like it – I’d seen the newsreels a thousand times – and put it in there one time. My father beat the shit out of me for stealing it. But it was nice to have-.” He stops. The story hangs there, like a thread waiting to be unraveled. He shakes his head. “But that’s it. That’s how the photo is still there.”

“Oh.” Steve’s words die in his throat. What can he say to that confession? “I-silly. I thought it survived for some reason.” He doesn’t admit that he’d thought it was because of his transcendental love. Because he knows – if he gets right down to it – that he loved Peggy mainly from afar. He laughs a little – a lot like now. He looks up at Tony, desperately wanting not to repeat history again, yet just as desperately muted and somber with reality. “I guess some things, some things were never meant to be.” He tears his glance away before Tony can meet it. 

Silence drops quiet and foreboding before Tony clears his throat and says, “How are you feeling? Do you think you can get to your feet?”

“Yeah. Soon.” In actuality, he feels like he needs to sleep for a week. The mind game of reality mixes and distorts. Part of him knows about his healing factor and the other part sticks in the past where he’s 98 pounds soaking wet and coughing up a lung because he’s soaking wet. None of that doubt helps him recover in this dreamed up world. He needs to focus on something else. 

“I tried to call you,” Steve says, failing to mention that he called in his mind.

“I wasn’t here anymore. They pulled me out,” Tony says and tugs Steve’s backpack away from him. He digs out the thermoses. 

“What? Why? Is Ross-.”

Tony shakes his head and frowns. “Nothing about Ross. At least not that I know of anyhow. My heart showed some erratic beating – that’s all.”

“Erratic? What?” Steve straightens, forgetting the stretch and pain in his chest. “What the hell happened?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Tony examines the thermoses. “Which one has coffee?” 

Steve refuses to indicate the correct one. He folds his arms. He’s in control of the coffee. It’s his stuff, so only he can will the coffee to appear in the thermos. 

“Okay. Fine. Be that way.” Tony grumbles under his breath and then explains, “Cho was nervous I might have a heart attack or, you know, go into cardiac arrest. And before you react, because I know you will, I am not in any danger. At all. She overreacted and brought me to the surface out of an abundance of caution. That’s all. After we went over the stats, I’m back. That’s it. End of story.”

“That’s not the end of the story, but the coffee is in that one,” Steve says and points. “Give me a cup, please. So, how’d you get back here so soon? Did you have to go through all the rims? How’d you bring my backpack with you?”

Tony pours the coffee and hands a cup to Steve. “Nope. The Door was in the maze rim. I figured that would happen. Ultron’s scrapping the rims as soon as we solve them or move through them, if you want to call it that. It disappeared as soon as I approached the maze. He’s pissed. The backpack was with me when I left so it appeared when I re-appeared.”

“I don’t think that’s a surprise that he’s pissed,” Steve says as Tony pulls out the other thermos. Steve nods and the magic thermos fills with fresh stew. They take turns eating out of the cup Steve drained of coffee. “So old missile silo?”

“Yeah. No idea why. It’s Soviet for sure.”

“Each and every rim has been linked to the Avengers.” He doesn’t mention Bucky. Or the dead that attacked him. 

“Yeah.” Tony leans against the back wall of the storage closet. “This has to be Romanoff. I gonna hate killing her.” His eyes are lowered, and his hands are useless in his lap.

“It’s not her,” Steve says, and he knows his tone’s not convincing anyone. Not even himself.

“Do you think he’ll use something more -.” Tony clenches his jaw and then spits it out. “Something more personal?” There’s real fear in his eyes, as if the shadows lurking in the storage closet shift and reform into monsters of the past.

“Anything’s possible.” He licks his lips and then slowly states, “He had Bucky attack me.” He points to his cheek. “Like he did in the Helicarrier. Well, it felt that way anyhow. This Bucky didn’t have a metal arm at first. I don’t think, ever. But he attacked me. Tried to kill me.” It hurts to say it, because in reality – it was true. Bucky as the Winter Soldier tried to kill Steve. It had been his mission and Steve told himself that a thousand times – truths never stop the nightmares though. 

Tony plays with the empty cup, spinning it on the concrete floor. “This is all kinds of fun.”

“And just think, you came back.”

“I came back for you,” Tony says and turns a bright shade of red – that Steve’s never seen on his face before in his life. He quickly tries to cover for his blunder. “For you because you need me. You can’t handle Ultron. Case in point.” He waves to Steve’s gut. 

“Our worst nightmares? You think that’s what Ultron is going to focus on?” Steve asks. He truly hopes that Ultron can’t read his mind. The leakage between Tony and Steve though worries him. If the virtual reality allows their thoughts behind their borders what does it mean for Ultron sneaking in and listening. He needs to broach the subject. He clears throat and asks, “So, I – I wanted to ask if you can hear me.”

Tony tilts his head and furrows his brows. “Yes. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”

Steve tightens his lips and thinks to himself - _Can you hear me, now_.

“What are you doing? Do you need to take a crap?” 

“What?” Steve yelps. “No, I don’t have to crap. I’m trying to send you messages telepathically. What are you even talking about?”

“Why are you trying to send me message telepa-.” Tony stops, glares at him, and then does a double take before he stands up and paces in the small space. “I cannot believe it. Those were real? Your real thoughts?”

“Yes.” Steve can’t make assumption what thoughts Tony’s specifically talking about, but this confirms his theory. “The connections must be a little leaky.”

“A little,” Tony mutters and sighs while he rubs a hand down his beard. “This is not good news.”

“What did you think was going on Tony? When you heard my thoughts? Did you even consider-.” It’s hard to believe that Tony dismissed such a vital piece of information. How could he? Why would he? What did he hear? “What did you hear?”

Tony waves him off and bows his head. “This is all kinds of bad. If the connection leaks, then it’s more than probable that Ultron listens in or at least catches snatches of information from us.”

“Can he dig into our memories, or is it just active thought?” Steve says and tries to sit up further. He’s thwarted for his efforts by a shock of pain through him. Lost in thought, Tony only shakes his head at Steve’s query. “We have to plan, Tony. We can’t-.”

“Fuck, I know. Don’t you think I know? He knows everything, everything that JARVIS knew. He knows what’s ever on the internet, and now he knows more.” Tony drops down next to Steve. “We’re royally fucked.”

“Ultron doesn’t know everything. Not everything,” Steve says softly, as if stating it will make it true. He decides the best way forward lies in the next step. Sometimes when faced with a war, planning the next battle is all you can do. “How many more rims?”

Tony drops his head and presses his fingers into his eyes. “Not many, I don’t think. We’ve gotten far into it. According to my calculations, Ultron’s encryption beyond what we had to do to hack into his brain is more basic. It might be this one and one more. That’s it.”

“It’ll get more dangerous then,” Steve says. “The last piece was a maze, but Ultron wanted to play – wanted to-.”

“Delay!” Tony finishes. “He must have cracks in the system. Fatal flaws that he’s trying to fix before we manage to get there.”

“Like when we first entered, the construct of Clint kept having to be rebooted. It glitched a lot then. It hasn’t in a while, though some of the same dangers and challenges have been big on his list.” Steve closes his eyes. His head aches, the digital input information and how the serum enhances his senses tries his patience and his ability to stop the nausea and dizziness. Without opening his eyes, Steve comments, “Ultron has a limited repertoire.”

Tony gasps. “That’s it. You got it, Cap!” He shakes his fist. “I should have known; I should have figured this out. You and I are unpredictable to him; we’re free agents. He’s not. He’s learning as he goes and can only figure out a few things at a time – which is weird-.”

“But it isn’t.” Steve gazes at him. “It’s not. Ultron’s ultimate goal with building Vision was to become more human, an idealized version of humanity. In the end though he only has one figure that’s his model.”

Tony deflates a degree. “Me. He’s limited by my limitations.” He taps his forehead and it oddly reminds Steve of when Winnie the Pooh would knock on his own head and say _Think, think, think._

“I can hear you,” Tony grouses. “My limitations are few – so we’re working with a large canvas.”

Steve negates that immediately. “No. Ultron thinks you’re inferior to him. So, if he wants to be human, he has to shrink down his abilities to multi-task. It’s the only way to become more human. Otherwise he’s always confined to being an AI.”

“Well that’s a little insulting on his part.” Tony dusts off his shirt front as if he’s dirtied by Ultron’s conclusions – or Steve’s suppositions. 

“It’s also very narrow minded. Ultron’s literally restricting his own options,” Steve says and then shifts. His body aches and he forces his brain to accept that this virtual reality – is just that – not real. Not his physical reality. He’s fine in the real world. It doesn’t work.

“It kind of reminds me of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.” When Steve doesn’t indicate any understanding, Tony hunches forward as if he’s clamoring to let him in on a secret. “It’s original series movie. Khan is firing on the Enterprise and Spock notices that Khan is using only 2 dimensional thinking. He’s not thinking about the z axis in space where he can attack.” When Steve still doesn’t react, Tony huffs. “It shows a naiveté about strategy and planning. We have an opportunity to exploit here.”

“Yep,” Steve says. He reaches out a hand. “Help me up.”

“You can’t barely breath without making noise, I don’t think you’re ready to stand up.” Tony ignores Steve’s request and starts rifling through his backpack. “Unfortunately, the game has done a job on my backpack.”

Steve grumbles and focuses on getting to his feet. The pain swoons his senses and for a second the all too perfect world blacks out, but he’s able to fight through it and stay on his feet. They have to do some recon to figure out what Ultron has up his metal sleeve for this rim. The glitches have been far less – that means Ultron’s learning, but it also means his learning capacity has shifted. Ultron’s decided to go with what he knows instead of rebooting characters and the game to add more information. He’s locked his resources so to speak.

“I’m gonna do some recon.”

“You can hardly stand and your barefoot. When did you lose your boots?” Tony says and zips closed his bag. “Sit down. I’ll go.”

“Really, I’m fine. I have to get the lay of the land,” Steve argues.

Tony grips his shoulder and – for one moment – his eyes grow serious and solemn. “Let me do this Steve. You need to heal.”

Steve holds Tony’s gaze and he thinks – with a wistful hope – that he sees something more – something protective and concerned – something possessive of Steve. As if Steve belongs to Tony. Tony tears his gaze away and the moment flashes away. Steve steps back and nods. He finds an edge of a stone ledge and sits down. “Don’t go far.”

“I won’t.” Tony has the gauntlet on and he’s out the thick steel door in seconds before Steve can wish him well. 

It only takes about 3 minutes before Steve’s made it to his feet again and shuffles to the door. The agony in his gut tampers down to a low throb. His face is numb, thanks to the nanotech Tony sprayed on it. Steve slips out into the corridor. It’s all very utilitarian, all concrete and fluorescent tube bulbs that hum lowly. They flicker and give an eerie feel to the whole passageway. There are several arches along the corridor – heading where – Steve doesn’t know. The concrete floor is cold against the soles of his feet. The corridor smells like oil and grease, slightly reminiscent of Tony’s workshop. That’s logical, considering. 

He steps further into the corridor, hoping to find some hint of where Tony headed. He throws a glance back at their storage closet and then moves into the shadows of the first arch. He hears a mechanical sound like gears engaging. It’s too loud to be Tony’s armor. The sound abruptly stops as quickly as it started. He realizes too late that it must have been a service elevator. Turning on his heel, he heads back to their hideout only to find that the corridor has changed. The storage closet has been replaced by a dead-end.

“Shit.” He doesn’t have the backpacks. Neither of them. Consistency has been working in their favor since the very first rim. The Hawkeye outer rim had so many glitches and reboots things would change unexpectedly, but after that the world and game had settled. Now, Ultron’s playing with it again. Changing things to get the advantage.

“Steve? Cap?”

He turns around to look down the side passage to find Tony half jogging toward him. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you in the closet?”

_That’s a leading question._ Steve thinks and jolts himself out of a stupor of misunderstanding before he says, “I walked out to see if you were around and the closet disappeared.” 

Tony peers out of the side passage and then pops back in close to Steve. “Fuck. Fuck. That’s all I have that’s the supplies. That’s my fucking suit.”

Steve points to the gauntlet. “You still have the gauntlet.” 

“No shit. But that’s not going to do us a world of good against Ultron and his army.”

“He has an army?” Steve gasps.

“No.” Tony flinches at Steve startled reaction. “I mean I don’t know, but once we get to the Hub, who the hell knows what we will be up against.”

“We got only the shield you made me and your gauntlet. That’s going to have to be enough,” Steve says and berates himself mentally for leaving the storage closet. 

“Don’t worry about it, Cap. He would have made you leave one way or the other.” 

That’s patronizing and a little comforting at the same time. Steve swallows down his snippy reply and sinks back into the shadows of the archway. “You have any ideas about what’s next?”

He thumbs it over his shoulder. “Empty rooms back there. I think we have to follow the main corridor and see where he’s leading us.”

“That’s playing into his hand,” Steve says and leans against the cold concrete wall. “Soviet missile silo indicates Natasha, but so far nothing about her from what you searched?”

“Nothing. But I only had a few minutes to look.”

“Well, we don’t have a lot of choices. Unless you want to slip out of this rim and go back?” It hadn’t occurred to him before to really retrace their steps. Doing it might throw Ultron off, cause the AI to do another pause in the virtual reality. “It might be the best way to go.”

Tony frowns. “I don’t think that’s going to work. We need to go forward. We don’t have any other chance to get through this. Going back just makes us have to face Loki and the maze again. There’s no logic in that.”

“Other than it would throw Ultron off, give us some time.”

Tony rubs at his eyes and then releases a heavy breath. “Jesus. I just don’t know. This is like fighting myself.”

A familiar voice from behind them answers, “You could say that. But maybe not.”

Standing in the secondary passageway, the three figures emerge from the dark. Natasha doesn’t surprise him. This is her past after all. The Winter Soldier at her side gives Steve a little jolt of fear and regret. It’s the third figure that terrifies him the most.

“Captain.”

Steve glances at Tony quickly and then back at the mirror twin of himself. The trio – Steve, Natasha, and Bucky are not here to invite them to a welcoming party. His twin is slightly off, different. His features are too perfect, his eyes far too blue. His uniform is crisp and clean, his hair perfectly coiffed. His jaw is razor sharp. His features sculpted from a Greek God. He looks nothing like Steve, but is his twin nonetheless. 

“And what’s the deal here, Ultron,” Tony asks because Steve’s too tongue tied to even try to advance a cognizant thought. “We’re no longer trying to keep things realistic.”

Alternate Steve shares a look with Natasha and then nods. She raises her Glock and points it at Tony’s chest, but then slowly moves it over to target Steve’s head. Alternate Steve glares at him and then back at Tony. “You do know what he did to you. How he wanted to save his friend. This one.” With a casual wave he indicates the Winter Soldier. “Would you like to see how your mother died? Would you like to know that she begged?”

Tony’s eyes go wide with shock and horror. The passageway gets smaller, confined, and the pounding of Steve’s heart mirrors the ache from his chest wound. He shakes his head at Tony, still unable to formulate decent words to explain.

“Oh he didn’t tell you?” Ultron created Steve smiles. It’s hideously beautiful. “There’s a recording, a tape of it. Would you like to know? Would you like to experience your mother and father’s last moments?”

Finally, Steve finds his words. “Don’t do this. You can’t do this.” He whips around to Tony, beseeching him to believe his words. “I didn’t know. I told you it was indirect evidence. I didn’t see anything direct- Nat. Natasha tell him.” He’s forgotten himself. This isn’t Natasha, but a non-player character – another aspect of Ultron himself.

Her eyes glimmering, she answers, “He knows. He always has. Knows all about how your father recognized him. How it had always been planned. We knew the story well in the Red Room. Didn’t we, Soldier?”

Bucky as the Winter Soldier comes to life, his words are slightly off – as if Ultron has a difficult time with articulating the character. “Maybe to convince them, they should see the recording.”

“You’re too proud of your work,” Natasha says and then whispers something that just might be an endearment. It’s shocking and odd. After all this is Ultron playing against himself.

“You knew?” Tony asks.

It’s derailed everything. “Tony, don’t listen to them. They’re trying to distract us. They’re trying to pit us against one another-.”

A weeping sound echoes through the corridor. Then Steve hears it – he hasn’t heard Howard’s voice in more than half a century, but he recognizes it. Howard’s voice pained and weak – brings a reckoning to Steve’s soul. To his heart. Steve doesn’t even hear the words only sees Tony’s face, crumpling before him. 

“No, Tony, no. I didn’t know. Not like this – I didn’t.”

“You told me that he killed them. You knew!” Tony says and a flash of anger rushes through his features. 

“Not how. Not like this!”

Then the voice of Tony’s mother follows – she’s calling for her husband. The image pops into Steve’s brain and he should be frightened and shocked that Ultron’s able to manipulate their neural inputs. But the image of Bucky standing at the side of the car, the passenger side. His flesh and blood hand in the car, and the gurgling sound of a woman choking to death, her last cries a simple and pitiful whimper. 

It isn’t Steve who answers Tony. It’s the Alternate Steve, the one that’s too perfect, too godly and arrogant. “I knew. I always knew. I’ve known for years and I’ve hidden it. Not to find him. He’s a lost cause.” The image of Bucky as the Winter Soldier fades away. “I did it for this moment. To have this power over you. Why else would I hide it? I’m a strategist, a planner. I know how to win a war, Stark. This is who I am. You needed to be put in your place. I kept it in my back pocket just for this time. You think we don’t know who you really are? You think we don’t know it’s you who are fooling the whole world into thinking it’s Ultron and not you dabbling in the networks to control everything. You think we don’t know.”

The words collide in Steve’s head like the clash of balls in the game of pool, scattering and going every which way. Reality malforms. He’s not sure what’s real and what isn’t. Did he know? More than just an inference. Surely, he made the connections. He never saw a tape recording. But why does he know that image like it’s been burned into his brain. How did Ultron find a recording – the answer is clear – the download of all of SHIELD’s secrets.

He turns to the clone of himself, of Natasha. “You can’t do this. This isn’t what happened. You both -.” He stops himself. “You know it, Ultron. Tony don’t believe them. Don’t think I saw it. I never saw it.”

“What did you know? How much did you know?” Tony’s searching his lookalike’s face and then his face for the truth.

“I didn’t know other than a quick reference.” Anger rages through him. This was supposed to be a fair fight. A fight of fist-to-cuffs, not a mind game. But then again, Natasha learned mind games in her training. This would be what to expect from this rim. “Ultron, you know Natasha – Natasha saw the same thing I did. She knows exactly what I know.”

“Do I now?” Natasha hasn’t lowered the gun. She walks over to him and points the gun right at his temple. “You need to start remembering who I am, Rogers.”

“I know who you are, and this isn’t it!” Steve says but his pulse screams in his vessels and his ears roar with it. “None of this is true Tony. You have to believe me.” The pounding in his cheekbone spears through his skull like a dagger, the pain growing with each passing minute. 

Alternate Steve jumps in, a smirk on his face. His hulking body looms over Tony. “You know I’m right. You want to know why you know?” He spares a glance at Steve and then focuses back on Tony. “You know it. Don’t you?” His words are nearly like a lover’s in their tone. “It’s because I can read his thoughts. You know it. You know I know who he is better than you do. You know that he keeps too much hidden. Hidden away. He’s wanted you off the team from the start.”

“Tony, don’t listen to him.”

Natasha whips around and pushes the barrel of the gun against Steve’s temple. A flash of concern – what would happen if she blew his head off? Would he survive? He’s in a dream like state. No one really knows if you die when you die in a dream. 

“I can read him clear as a bell. He wants you gone. You’re a problem. You’re the problem.” Alternate Steve smiles and then steps away, giving Tony space, leaving him abandoned, alone to figure out the truth. The shadows shift and move in the corridor like phantoms of their pasts.

“Tony I-.”

Natasha cocks the gun. 

The Alternate Steve flickers and for a second Steve glimpses the outline of Ultron’s skull. The façade falls into place again. “You know what has to be done. He’s been playing you the entire time.” As Alternate Steve talks his uniform darkens and turns black. A familiar horrifying insignia appears on his chest to replace the star. “He made have taken down Hydra in truth, but he always wanted the power it possessed. Always. He’s just waiting for his chance. Do you wonder what else he’s hiding?”

“No,” Steve whispers. Natasha bashes the barrel against his temple. He sees stars but mercifully stays conscious. _Tony, hear me. Believe me._ He gets no indication that Tony hears him at all. He tries heedlessly. _Tony, believe me, please. Please. I would never hurt you. I-._ This probably isn’t the time or the place to play with emotions but he has this one card, this one truth. _I would never hurt you, Tony. I wouldn’t. Ever. I love you._

Tony stands in the corner of the corridor, his arms wrapped around himself, staring down at his feet. The light morphs around him like a beast waiting to devour him. Nothing, no movement, no twitch from Tony gives away that he’s heard anything Steve projected to him. His eyes come up and he gazes solely on Alternate Steve. “Kill him.”

Steve gasps at the same time he hears from Tony - _Trust me._

“Are you sure you don’t want to do it yourself?” Alternate Steve gloats. 

“I don’t want that filth on my hands. I want to watch.” 

Even though Steve trusts Tony with his life, he cannot stop the rampant stampede of his heart in his chest. It’s painful and throbs a beat against the soreness of his wound. He fists his hands and stands perfectly still, his eyes never leaving Tony.

“Do it!” Tony commands. 

The Glock clicks, a flash of light, and then they’re running through the corridors of the Soviet base. Steve’s not sure what the hell just happened, but Tony has him by the hand and they flee. 

“Don’t stop!” Tony commands. His eyes are wild with the chase. Steve cannot hear anyone behind them, but that’s not the game anymore. The game has no rules or restrictions. 

“How the hell?” Steve gulps for air and looks down at his gut. His wound is open again, freely bleeding. The rules have changed.

“I hacked him.” Tony rounds a corner and tugs Steve with him. 

They pause of a minute, both of them panting and fighting for breath. “Wh-what do you mean you hacked him?”

“While he was monologuing this time, I went ahead and dove straight into his brains. I figured we might be close enough to the Hub for me to try. I did. I couldn’t do much damage, not without him noticing, but I got there soon enough to stop him from killing you.”

“Do you think that’s wise? You gave up your hand -.”

Tony’s eyes flare with annoyance and a touch of rage. “He could have killed you; I did what I had to do.”

“He can’t kill me in here.”

“I’m not so sure about that. Not anymore.” Tony touches the blood seeping out of Steve’s wound. “I think he’s accessing our brains.”

“I am not that person- not that Hydra Steve person!” Steve retorts.

“No, of course you’re not,” Tony says and peers around the corner. “No sign of pursuit. Not yet. He’s regrouping.” Most of the time Tony’s attention is only half in the real world – or in the world plainly in front of him. When Tony turns to Steve, his eyes are stark and true. “He has connected to our brains. Not our thoughts or our higher functions, but our reptilian functions. If he wants us dead, then he might just be able to click his fingers and kill us.”

“Shit.”

“Yep.” Tony pops the ‘p’. 

“We can’t get out without the exit Door.” Steve leans against the wall of the passageway. The pursuit, the chase, the mission all weighs too heavily on his shoulders. “Why can’t he just kill us where we stand?”

Tony shakes his head. “I’ve no idea, but I suspect it’s the little worm I implanted in his brain. So, it’s a tit for tat kind of thing right now.” 

“Jesus,” Steve says and wants desperately to slide down to the floor. “We still need to get to the Hub then?”

“No other choice. We get to the Hub and we get to the exit Door. There’s only one way out. And we have to get out before my worm does it’s job because otherwise, we’ll be stuck in here forever or we’re all dead.”

“Well, that’s pleasant.” Now is not the time for self-pity. He needs to stay alert and help. He’s supposed to be the protector of the two of them. Get Tony to the Hub, protect and shield him. “Any ideas? Did you get a clear picture of the Hub. I mean I know this is a virtual place that Ultron can change at any time, but there must be-.”

“Structure to keep his integrity intact!” Tony’s expression brightens with elation. “Yes! He has to keep some structure otherwise his continuity and integrity will crumble. We can latch onto that – for as long as we can to find our way to the Passage and the Hub.”

“What clues do you have?” 

“Not much. It was a room like high up in the Alps. Lots of old tech equipment.”

“You got all that as you implanted a worm?” Steve shakes his head. “That sounds suspiciously like the Red Skull’s hideaway. I think you must have read that from my mind, not his brain.”

“Shit, but I implanted the worm. I know I did. Otherwise you’d be out of the picture now.” Tony rubs his hand through his hair. “Fuck a duck.”

“Is there a chance that he tried to throw you off while you were implanting it? That even though you may have succeeded, Ultron threw virtual dead ends your way.”

“It’s absolutely true.” 

They both jerk in response to the intrusion of their conversation. In the corner of the recessed hallway, Vision appears. He’s not like other characters of the virtual reality. He’s translucent and flickering. “I have very little time. Wanda brought me into your minds. She doesn’t know how long she can manipulate both of you at the same time without Ultron sensing her and me.”

“But you know something?” Steve asks but Tony puts up his hand to stop the inquiry. 

“If you’re Vision prove it.”

Vision turns to Steve, his odd eyes all the more penetrating and eerie in the virtual space. “You know, only you do. That Wanda and I have mated.”

“Oh Christ,” Tony mutters. “My robot baby has a girlfriend.”

“Well, it’s Vision,” Steve confirms and rubs at his face hoping the heat of his embarrassment fades quickly and cannot be seen in the low lighting of the corridor. “Tell us.”

Vision nods. “Ultron’s code is unraveling. It’s degrading all across the internet. It’s lashing out. You only need to get to the Hub to finish him off. According to my calculations, the virtual reality will completely disintegrate in a little over one hour. To be specific 84 minutes and 25 seconds.” He points down the passageway. “There’s little time. The exit Door is losing integrity due to the implanted worm.”

“Can you tell where it is?” Tony asks.

“Not precisely. But I do know that this complex is a ruse, a maze with no way out.”

“There was a way in,” Tony replies and cringes at himself. “The rules, everything is changing.”

“So, let’s take advantage of that,” Steve interjects. “If he can manipulate the rules, then we can too. All we need to do is get to the Hub.”

“I don’t think we can do that, if we don’t have information about the Hub, we can’t automatically get there. I would have thought of that before we started this accursed journey.”

Steve waves him off. “No. We get rid of everything else in the world. You’ve been able to do it before. Shift things. Shit, you just did it when Ultron was going to have Natasha shoot me. Get rid of everything.”

“We both have to believe it for it to work,” Tony says.

“You would have to do at the same exact time. I’m afraid that’s impossible considering you are two separate beings,” Vision says. “Humans are not that precise.”

“Oh we can be,” Tony smirks. 

_With the link._

“You got it.” 

“Got what may I inquire?” Vision asks, but there’s no time to answer him. Wanda’s manipulation must falter because he blinks out. A beat of light and then nothing at all.

“Well, that was a little too Deus ex Machina for me. I hope she stays out of our heads now,” Tony remarks as he checks around the corner again. “It’s clear. I don’t know what Ultron’s planning right now. He’s not chasing us.”

“He’s waiting.” Steve says and feels the shock of pain in his gut. “He’s waiting for me to fall. He wants to meet you alone, Tony. He doesn’t want me to be there.” Truth be told, Steve’s not sure he’ll be able to make it. The darkened corridor descends farther into blackness and his vision pixelates like it did when he first entered the virtual world. “He’s changed the rules.” He peels back the jacket of the uniform. The nearly healed wound is open, bloody, and oozing pus. “He tried to get me out of the picture before. He wants you alone.”

“Then we take him down before he can. We got to get you out of here. There’s too much risk but we have to do it.” Tony mutters a few calculations to himself and then says, “We do this together. Right? Together.”

Steve’s not going to disappoint Tony, not break him apart and break him down. Even though, his consciousness is shattering – he straightens and ignores the agony. “Together.”

_Then let me have your consciousness_.

Steve acquiesces and everything goes black. Consciousness swarms around him as if he’s fighting to stay in a deep slumber. He relaxes further as a sensation of warmth and ease suffuses through him. He reaches through it as if he’s burrowing deeper into his blankets trying to find sleep that’s ever elusive. What he finds he might later call a miracle, or magical, or even altering. There amongst the darkness calling him down, down, down the rabbit hole is Tony. It’s like staring into the heart of the galaxy, a swirl of light and brilliant clouds. Tony isn’t a simple mortal being, not like Steve – Steve’s not this – not at all. Tony’s spirit uplifts and spreads out like wings on a soaring bird. When he encompasses Steve, the brightness of light and strength pervades through him so that he doesn’t know where he begins or ends. He transforms, transcends his meager mortal existence and he evolves. He becomes one with Tony. It’s more than a friendship, it’s more than a simple love story. It lays him bare, exposed, and brutal in the harsh unforgiving lands of pure unmasked vulnerability. 

Steve shivers through it, fighting to keep himself open to Tony, allow Tony purchase and entrance. They have no other way to fight Ultron, but to find this route, this way toward the heart of the center of the AI. Yet, it terrifies him. He has never been so exposed and open, so raw and honest with anyone – even himself. Tony can read every thought, know all his hopes and dreams, his fears and doubts. He knows Steve’s own self-hatred that he wraps up in piles of stoic harmony, keeping it hidden away to ensure no one knows who the real Steve Rogers is. 

Because Steve Rogers isn’t the patriotic son of America. 

He’s a broken toy soldier whose lost his way and needs someone to anchor him. Even as a soldier in the war that defined a century, Steve knew he was a fraud, a fake. He knew he was a small man without any physical strength hiding inside a muscle suit made to order by the United States’ war machine. When he woke up decades later in a new century, Steve found himself lost without his tether to that old world. That old world that told him who to be and what to be. This world, his new world gave him the choices. Told him it was okay to be and to love who he wanted. None of it made any sense.

All of it shattered him until he glued himself back together again using denial, arrogance, and stoicism. He marched to the beat of a long distant drum, one of war and pride. Ultron wasn’t wrong when he accused Steve of being ‘God's righteous man. Pretending you could live without a war.’ Ultron shocked him out of his stupor and Steve faced reality

The reality of his own yearnings, the deprivation he’d subjected himself to all the years of his life. Tony Stark became the center of his life. And now, Tony’s there, in his mind, drinking from the well of knowledge. Steve’s bare naked in the woods, helpless and afraid. Tony can cut him down, remove all hope and devastate him from the inside. Forgotten is the pain of his wounds, all he knows is Tony. He releases all hold he has on ‘self’ – he slips into the presence of Tony. Everything ebbs away.

And in the center of the light, focusing it all – is Ultron. 

The Hub.

It’s there. All they need do is leap, enter the Hub and then find the exit Door. The worm will do the rest. They’ve destroyed the rest of the world. There’s nothing left to this reality then the Hub – which is the most dangerous place of all.

_Don’t let go._

Steve agrees with Tony. He clasps on, though it’s not in a physical sense. They arrive at the Hub and it’s plainly _within_. Their conscious beings merge with the intelligence that is Ultron. At first, it’s as blinding and brilliant as his encounter with Tony’s consciousness. Yet as he sinks deeper into the Hub, Steve discovers the brightness, the glittering beauty only hides a sanctum of depravity. 

The wickedness assails him. He feels Tony hover closer as if the horror before them, the feelings of hatred, loathing, and the need to inflict pure unadulterated pain – on his maker. The only way to do that according to the AI – destroy everything that Tony loves, that Tony cares for, that Tony wants to keep safe and sacred. 

The Hub isn’t anything that Steve imagined, but it’s not a place or a virtual reality, but a state of mind. The Hub is built on the mind of a devious, unforgiving artificial intelligence. Not some entity capable of empathy or understanding but an analytical being that simply put facts together, erased of any emotion or humanity. It may have once stated its purpose to destroy and then recreate the world in its own image, but the underlying reality is far different.

Tony. 

It wants Tony. 

The hulking presence of a nefarious being surrounds them, searching for a way to destroy them, to cripple and torture Tony. Steve shields Tony at every pass. The darkness broods, shadows them and expands and encompasses them. It tries to thwart them as they prod forward looking for the escape. Automatically, Steve throws defending thoughts out beyond where he feels Tony’s presence resides. His own aura spreads further like his shield and it’s familiar and easy to do. He knows how to defend, how to protect. He was made for this. 

A battering ram of malice hits at him and he curls around Tony’s spirit guarding him. Through their mental bond, Steve can tell that Tony’s calculating, figuring how the exit might be hidden, concealed within Ultron’s Hub. It’s not only the exit Door for them, but Ultron’s way to secure his control over the internet and the planet. If they don’t find it, not only are they stuck here but Ultron might sneak out again, might find an escape from the worm infecting his code. 

The storm of malignance pelts him and Tony shudders in his grasp. Like a mantra in his head, Steve murmurs the truths that he knows. He’s a shield, a protector, the best last defense for Tony. Decades ago, he was made for this purpose and this purpose alone. To protect and shield. To defend and preserve. He was never God’s righteous man; he has only always been just a man trying to do his best. His best is to secure Tony’s safety against the cruelty and hatred of an intelligence gone horribly wrong. 

Within him, in his own mind there’s a voice yelling out, denying these truths, telling him he’s not that at all. Steve refuses to hear, knowing that Ultron would do anything to twist his thoughts, to poison him against Tony. He latches on harder to his internal monologue of truth, shunning the pleading in his brain. Just as he does his hold shatters and shreds, everything disintegrates around him and he loses his hold of Tony. He grapples, falling, searching in a world of digital streams of data. He finds nothing to hold onto, nothing to break his fall, no sign of Tony anywhere. 

But then the shadows darken the world, and the light becomes a rigid pattern, boxing him into a corner in his mind until even he cannot sense the difference between reality and digital existence. 

He surrenders to it. 

CHAPTER 6  
**Interlude**

Tony jerks awake, arms pushing him up on the gurney, mouth opening, gulping for air. He shivers as awareness falls over him like a veil. The world around him looks somewhat less defined, oozing of blurs and stains of reality. He blinks several times and recognizes Doctor Helen Cho standing over him. Her eyes are frightened. In her hands she holds a syringe. 

Someone else close to the bed, says, “Oh thank God.” 

The people – his team, his family – seem to materialize out of the blurriness of the room. It’s Natasha who’s spoken and it surprises him because she’s never been known to be so emotionally linked with anyone on the team – except maybe Bruce at one time or even Steve, but never him. She’s leaning heavily against Sam and his eyes are glued not to Tony’s gurney but to the one across the room. Before Tony can ask what the hell just happened, it’s Cho who chimes in.

“We nearly lost you. You can’t go back in. We had to use the paddles to get your heart to beat regularly.” Her expression is stern but not unkind. “You could have died.”

“I-.” His voice croaks as he tries to speak. “I’m no-not done.” A whole body shudder comes over him. “Not done.”

“You can’t go back in, Tony,” Natasha says and moves away from Sam. She grips the side of the gurney, her knuckles white with tension. “It was touch and go. We waited as long as we could before we pulled you out.”

“It wasn’t supposed to work this way,” Sam says but he’s not looking at Tony. His arms are crossed over his chest, protective, worried. “It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous.”

“Whoever said that?” Tony manages but the effort drains him, and he collapses back onto the gurney. “Always risk.”

Sam whips around and glares directly at Tony. “Not like this. This wasn’t supposed to be life and death. What the hell kind of game did you play, Stark?”

Natasha reaches out but she’s too far away to touch Sam. “Sam, let’s not.”

“Let’s not what? Blame him? How often has that happened? No one blames him. He fucking builds a murder bot and no one blames him. And now -.”

“Sam don’t. Please.” Natasha’s tone is firm, commanding.

“No, just let him. Go ahead Sam what else do you have to say, hmm? Living here under my roof -.”

“This is not a boxing ring,” Cho says. “Stop it. Just stop!”

Tony deflates into the pillows of his bed, knowing full well he’s going to argue to go back in and to help Steve. This isn’t done yet, not by a long shot. Sam goes mute but his stare bores a hole right in Tony’s skull. Trying to distract himself from the hate in the room, Tony turns to something to avoid further personal discussion. “Is Steve-.”

Sam huffs out an angry breath and marches out of the room. Cho moves aside and pulls the curtain that separates the beds. Steve’s still under, still part of the virtual game. 

“We can’t wake him,” Natasha says. “No matter what we do. He won’t wake up.”

“You disconnected the input, right?” Tony says and he knows it’s irrational. Of course, they disconnected the input lines if they were planning on pulling him out. 

“We did. But the exit Door. Did you find it?” Natasha asks.

“I don’t – I calculated it. Figured it out. Sure,” he says and recognizes the doubt in his own tone. “You pulled me out twice. We didn’t need the exit Door – not really.” That’s not true. Not if they wanted a fully successful mission. The exit Door needs to be used to pass through and lock Ultron – his essence away from the internet and humanity. The exit Door serves both as a passage and a cage. “Steve protected me while I did the calculations. The Hub wasn’t a virtual reality that had the same character as the rest. The rest of them were like a video game- setting, place-.” He gets nauseous, closes his eyes. He puts a hand over his face. “Crap.”

“What?”

Tony rubs his face and tries to stem the tide of his nausea. “I don’t know. I think. I think the implant, the interface might be affecting it.”

“That’s not possible,” Cho says but her face washes out. 

“Ultron invaded the interface -.”

“He hacked it?” Natasha says and she looks dizzier than Tony feels. “If he hacked it, then-.”

“He read our thoughts, we’re pretty sure. If he hacked his way in, then-.”

“Stark.” Natasha shakes her head and gazes at him. “Steve’s not connected. Not anymore. That means-.”

“It means Ultron is over broadband or he’s in Steve’s head.”

All of them turn to stare at the inert figure on the gurney. Steve’s mouth is slightly open, his eyes are closed, his figure quiet, almost deathly. 

oOo

“Wakey, wakey.”

Steve groans and the sound vibrates through his chest like a truck. It hurts. He hadn’t realized it would still hurt when he awoke, but then he’s not sure what’s happening or, for that matter, what happened. He peels an eye open to see Tony hanging over his bed. His beard needs a trim and his hair is in disarray over his head. 

“There you go. Let’s see those blue blue eyes again. You know you need to stay awake this time. Last time you were awake for a whole 37 seconds. Got everyone excited.”

“Wha-?” The crack of his voice scrapes at his hearing and he only wants to roll over and go back to sleep. Whatever happened, it’s not good. 

“Come on, Cap.” Tony shakes his shoulder. “Steve, come on. It’s over. We got him.”

“Whatever you say.” Steve squirms down farther into the pile of blankets. “Cold. Go away.”

“I’ll get you hot chocolate and a big breakfast, but Cho wants you awake, so you have to get up,” Tony responds and this time his voice sounds a little frantic.

Reluctantly, Steve pulls the blankets down and through bleary eyes, focuses on Tony. “Cho?”

“Yeah, you’ve been caught in the Hub for three days. We barely were able to pull you out before we finally defeated Ultron.”

Steve frowns. “Three days?” That doesn’t sound right. “You weren’t there. It wasn’t three days.”

Tony smiles, and something soft and tender comes over his expression. He touches Steve’s hair. “It wasn’t three days for you. It was for us.”

“Oh.” Steve struggles to sit up but a looping vertigo spins his senses, and he flops back down. 

“Take it easy. It’s been a rough ride.” Tony goes to the counter where the medical supplies sit and brings over a cup of water. “Why don’t you drink this while I get you something to eat and that hot chocolate?”

Steve nods and grasps the cup with shaking hands. Tony slips out the door before Steve even lifts the cup to his mouth. The water clogs his throat, and he spits up a little. He tries to piece together what happened even as he fails to manage drinking a simple cup of water. He lies back into the pile of pillows. Three days – can he recall any of it? The last thing he remembers is sheltering Tony but then losing him. He fell – or they both did and that’s all. Nothing but darkness comes to mind as far as what happened with Ultron.

When Tony walks back into the room with a tray laden with food and a steaming mug, Steve’s sitting on the side of the bed, staring down at his bare feet. 

“Hey, hey. You need to get up, yeah, but let’s eat first.” Tony places the tray on the opposite bed – the one he’d occupied when they went under into Ultron’s virtual world. 

“I can’t remember.”

“Doctor Cho isn’t concerned about that,” Tony says and offers Steve the mug of cocoa.

Steve stares at the mug, the spirals of steam above the rim are intoxicating. “You never make me hot chocolate.” Tony hates him, especially since the revelation of his omission on the death of Tony’s parents. 

“It’s not a big deal.” He looks down at Steve’s feet. He bites back his lips and runs his hands through the mess of his curls – something Steve has always wanted to do – touch Tony, finger his curls. Tony shifts his focus and looks up at Steve. “I just wanted to do something nice for you – that’s all. I’m not the best at figuring things out when it comes to people. Ask Pepper. But I – I know you – I wanted to.” He stops, gathers himself, and then says, “Can we start again?”

The mug warms Steve’s frigid hands. He hasn’t tasted the milky chocolate yet. He gazes at the whipped cream and says, “If you want.”

Tony slides onto the side of the bed with Steve. “I want. I really want, Steve.”

“Steve,” he repeats. “It’s nice. I mean it’s nice to hear you use my name instead of my title.”

Tony stays quiet for a moment and then clears his throat. “It was a mistake. Not to do it before.” His voice, his tone sounds stilted as if he’s having a hard time finding the words and the right emotion to go along with them. “I didn’t mean to alienate you.”

Steve frowns. “I don’t think that’s what it was, Tony. It’s just nice to hear my name-.” He doesn’t add the rest – how he longs for him to say his name within a loving embrace. That’s something that will never happen for Steve. He puts the mug aside without having tasted it. “I think I should get dressed.” He’s only in a hospital gown – when did that happen? 

“Maybe you can eat first?” Tony points to the food. 

“Sure.” He goes to stand up, but his legs refuse to hold him, but Tony catches him and supports him back onto the gurney. “You need to realize you’ve had a rough time of it.”

Steve settles back in the bed. “About that- what exactly happened. All I remember is trying to stop Ultron from invading your mind and that’s it. I lost you.”

Tony brings the tray over and slides it onto his lap. An array of different foods are laid out including a roast beef sandwich, fries, a large salad, and even a small cup of noodle soup. “Go ahead and chow down. You need the calories.”

It seems peculiar that he’s nose blind to the smells of the food. Picking up the sandwich he bites into it as Tony watches, his eyes trained on Steve’s mouth. The first bite activates Steve’s salivary glands – but he tastes nothing. Nothing at all. His throat closes up again and his chest explodes with pain. He drops the sandwich, and it falls apart. 

His body shudders and Tony hovers close to him, slipping onto the gurney next to him. “Steve?”

The constriction around his throat gags and he croaks out – no words just sounds. 

Tony rubs his back and hunches close to him. “Hey. It’s okay. You don’t have to eat it if you’re not hungry.” Steve nods and tries to push the tray away- but his hands fumble with the effort. Non-plussed, Tony picks up the tray and brings it to the counter. He turns and studies Steve. “Are you okay? Should I get Cho?”

“I just-.” His voice returns but something hard and tight squeezes his chest. “I just don’t know what happened. How did we get out? What -.” His mouth tastes like sand. He’s so cold. “Did we destroy the Hub – did the worm do it’s job?”

“Worm?” Tony stops and sighs. “Yes, worm. Yes, it did what it’s supposed to do. You know I don’t leave anything to chance.”

He reaches out and Tony reacts, grabs his hand. Steve holds onto it as if he’s about to tumble off a cliff. “Tony, tell me how it happened. What happened? Why don’t I remember? Did something bad happen? Is everyone okay?”

Tony inhales deeply and then exhales with a measured pace. “It’s all okay, Steve. We’re okay. You’re just – it was rough for you. I wanted to tell you, but it wasn’t a good time. We had a hard time getting you out. A very hard time. We almost lost you.”

“What? Why?”

“Steve,” Tony pets Steve’s hand. “Ultron had you. He pretended to be me. You were there for months.”

“You said it was days,” Steve replies. Or did he? His gut throbs in a painful rhythm with his heart. “Didn’t you?”

He chews on his lower lip. “I did say days. I didn’t want you to get upset. He did things to you Steve – he used you. You thought – you thought I had feelings for you. It made you believe that you were in your happily ever after.”

The thoughts of his dreams coming true only to have them cracked open and lost hollows his hopes and he meets Tony’s eyes. All he sees is pity. “You-I don’t remember that.”

“Cho segmented that part of your memories and blocked them. You don’t want to remember them; he did things to you. He used you Steve. I don’t want you to remember them because he did them with my face.”

Steve pulls his hand away from Tony and then touches his temple, willing the memories back. Nothing reappears, only a cold wash of fear and emptiness. He gathers what threads of sanity he still has and asks, “The worm? Did we take down the Hub? Is he gone?”

“As gone as he’ll ever be.” Tony grasps Steve’s shoulder. “I thought me being here to help you through the recovery would help, but obviously that’s not going to be a good thing. I’ll have Sam come in and sit with you. Try and eat, okay? See you, Cap.”

Just like that the familiar is gone and sinking feeling lands in the bottom of his gut. He nods but doesn’t lift his gaze to meet Tony’s as he leaves the room. Steve doesn’t eat. He leaves the food to congeal and go cold. Instead, he curls up under the blankets again and thinks about Ultron exposed him, how Tony knows. How he’s that small 90 pound weakling again that no one ever wanted. 

_He did things to you_. 

As Captain America he ran missions into the heart of Nazi territory, saw horrors unfold in front of him, took more bullets than he cares to remember, but something Ultron did to him qualifies as worse. He searches his memories, but he only finds holes, pits, an abyss of nothing when he chances upon the last moments he can recall. 

Storm clouds filled with malice and hatred infiltrating his consciousness. His tenuous mental grip on Tony, bonded through their new link, slipped, faltered, and then snapped. Ultron swept in like a hurricane, destroying everything, beyond that, Steve remembered nothing. Something deep in his bones echoes with pain, reverberates with a secret, a prison in which he’d been trapped.

Much later as he stares absently at the ceiling of the medical bay, Sam enters the room and his movements a little less fluid, a lot less graceful than Steve recalls. For a second, Sam blurs in his vision and he needs to blink several times to clear the visual vibrations. Sam seems to read his thoughts.

“Doctor Cho said you might have some issues with vision and auditory artifacts. The serum didn’t play well with the interface.” Sam crosses his arms over his chest – a stance Steve always paired with him readying for battle. “You’re going to be okay, Steve. You know that, right?”

Steve sits back up in bed, never one to want others to know his weaknesses. “I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to be recovering from, so -.” He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “I guess?”

Sam snickers a little and grasps his shoulder. It’s supposed to be friendly, a gesture of familiarity but somehow it feels off. “You just get better, right? Always the same with you. Trying to be the soldier.”

“What?”

Sam stops, his smile drops, and he lowers his gaze to the floor. It takes a moment for him to regroup. “Sorry, man. Just trying to make you feel better. Cho said you’ve been through a lot.”

Cho said – Cho decided. “What’s this with Cho? When do I get to speak with her?”

The hesitation isn’t slight’ it’s downright behemoth. The pause becomes so uncomfortable that Sam jerks a little to the side and Steve’s eyesight blurs again. He claps a hand over his eyes. The haziness of his vision is enough to cause his stomach to rebel. 

“She said it would be like this,” Sam says quietly. “Just take your time, Steve.”

“She should come in here and face the music.” He drops his hands. His eyes tear. “I want her to unblock my memories. I have a right to know what the hell happened.”

“It’s not something-.”

“Yes, it is. And when you would ever think I wouldn’t want to know? That I would go along with something like this?” He tears away the blankets and stands up on wobbly legs. “I want to see her. I want to see her now.” His legs shake like sticks in the wind. He grips the side of the bed. “Tony told me to get up, to get moving. We have things to do. We need to deal with Ross.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” Sam presses a hand on his chest. “You need to get back in bed. Cho-.”

“Fuck Cho!” 

“Jesus, Steve, I thought better of you.” Sam’s image flickers in his vision and for a second, Steve thinks he might pass out, but he holds onto consciousness and reality. 

“I don’t know why. You’ve seen me at my worst,” Steve says and stalks off to the bathroom. He slams the door behind him and then sits on the closed toilet. His hands tremble and his eyes burn. The tremors and the visual disturbances are as bad as they were when he first entered the Ultron’s mind. A coldness racks his body, and he shivers like he’s tormented with a fever.

Cho did something to him. He doesn’t know what, but whatever she did it’s playing havoc with the serum and with his ability to function. Standing, he grasps the sink’s edge and stares into the mirror. A horror greets him. His eyes are deep wells, his skin sallow and hanging. He closes his eyes, swallows and reaches for the faucet, but before he touches it, he hears a voice.

“Steve. Steve?”

He snaps open his eyes and looks up. His reflection disappears and in its place is Tony. In the mirror. Now he’s really going crazy.

“Steve, can you hear me?”

He glances behind him and then back to the mirror. “Y-yes?” 

“Don’t believe a word of it. Don’t believe your eyes. It’s not real. You’re stuck in the Hub. You need to get out before the worm finishes infecting Ultron.” Steve can see through Tony’s image. He sees the door behind him. “Steve, can you hear me?”

“Yes- yes. I hear you. It’s not real? None of this is real?”

“Whatever’s happening – no. They pulled me out. They tried to pull you out. They can’t. Ultron’s hiding in your brain. You need to help the serum reject him.”

Steve shakes his head, his hands trembling as he grips the sides of the sink. “I don’t know how? I’m a soldier, Tony. You know that. That’s who I am. I know the physical fight, not this. Not the mental one.”

“Fuck that shit. You’re our strategist. You can do this. Stop thinking like Ultron. That’s Ultron talking. God’s righteous man. Get dirty, Steve. Get out.”

He knows nothing about computers or about artificial intelligence. Tony asks for the impossible. Yet, Steve had never been one to back down from a fight, even one he knew he had no business in and no hope of winning. He starts to ask Tony for advice, but the mirror blurs out like the fog of a steaming shower over the surface. Behind him, he hears the door to his room open.

“Steve?”

It’s Tony’s voice. Steve looks at the smeared mirror again and the image of Tony completely disappears from view. 

“Are you in there?”

Steve bites back his words. Is it his Tony? _His_ Tony. Something he always wanted and never got. Would never get. Steve cracks open the bathroom door and peers out to watch Tony wander around the room. He picks up a stray cup, puts it down, shoves his hands in his pockets, rocks back and forth on his feet. It looks like his Tony. 

It does.

Steve opens the door. “Tony.”

“Glad to see you up, champ.” Tony smiles. It’s one of those plastic smiles he uses for the press.

“Up and ready to get back to it, I think.”

“Cho release you?” Tony looks him up and down.

“Well, I haven’t really seen her so I’m just going to go with yes.” He thumbs back to the bathroom. “I’m gonna get dressed.” Slipping away quickly, Steve gathers the clothes from the tiny closet and closes the door. He rushes to the mirror. “Tony? Tony are you there?”

Nothing. His own reflection answers him, haggard, old, frail. He backs away from the image, grabbing the clothes. He needs to get out, figure out how to active the serum to stop Ultron’s invasion in his head. If Ultron settles inside of him, then what will happen to his own consciousness? Would they be able to get him out? Would he have any chance of survival? Would his team need to terminate him for the good of the world?

Steve’s always been ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, but he hates the thought of his team saddled with the guilt of that decision. 

He needs to figure out if that person in the room is actually Tony’s consciousness or Ultron. Dressing, Steve rolls his shoulders – the clothes are old fashioned, plaid and stiff with starch. This world Ultron created in his own brain hasn’t caught up with reality. Steve hasn’t worn this style of clothing since he moved to Washington D.C. and Natasha took him out for a shopping spree with what she called a ‘burn your closet down’ after party. It only means one thing – Ultron doesn’t really know him, not really. If Steve makes the next logical step along the way, then it would mean that Ultron may not be up to date on Tony either.  
Steve focuses on this tiny fact, planning on running with it. A knock raps on the door. 

“You in there?”

“Yes, yes. Coming.” Steve glances one more time over his shoulder into the mirror in hopes to see Tony again, but what he sees is a skeletal face with whispers of shiny metal. Ultron plans on controlling Steve. He can’t have that – not at all.

Opening the door, Steve smiles at Tony. He presses his hand down the shirt. “Just like new again.”

Tony slaps him on the arm. “What do you say, we go get some coffee. Maybe something to eat. Feed that serum of yours.”

Steve doubts anything in the Hub will nourish the serum. It’s like being in the Fey realm – food is only a mirage. “Let’s go.” He’ll play along for now. Getting the lay of the land is his plan right now. He doesn’t have time, though. The worm works its wonders and who knows what damage it might do to his head if he’s not rid of Ultron by the time it’s done.

It becomes fairly clear as they head toward the main living rooms of the complex that Ultron depends entirely on Steve’s memories of the new compound in Upstate New York. Some of the structure of the corridors aren’t complete, signifying that Ultron’s access to his mind and memories teeters on superficial. Steve knows this part of the compound is complete; Tony ensured that the living quarters came first in the building. Ultron’s lack of knowledge might be the key to Steve’s escape.

“So, when do you think the compound will finish all this work,” Steve says and points to the raw structure of the hallways.

“Soon. Soon.” Tony doesn’t look at Steve. Tony always looks at Steve when he’s proud of his accomplishment, as if he’s looking for validation. 

Steve decreases his pace and trails Tony, watching how well Ultron imagined this world he’s trapped him in. Sure, the compound is only bones, but Ultron knows Tony – at least in his physicality and that’s startling and frightening all at once. Tony disappears into the living room and Steve pauses, taking a breath and clearing it. His gut still aches. His brain magnifies the agony in his skull, but he must focus on the task at hand – escape from Ultron’s world inside his head.

Tony goes to the sink and mutters something as Steve enters the living room, kitchen space. It’s large and expansive, a little too modern for his tastes and totally nothing like how Tony decorated. Ultron got it right that the place would be modern in it’s stainless steel, chrome, glass, and leather, but nothing else speaks of Tony. So, while Ultron knows Tony’s surface he doesn’t know what’s underneath. 

Steve wonders if he does. He wonders if that’s the key.

“Coffee? Eggs? What would you like?”

Steve waves off the offer of food. “I’ll just get some coffee.” He won’t drink it. Time is ticking and freedom slips away with every second. 

Tony stares at the stovetop but then busies himself with the coffeemaker. It would be a hoot if Tony’s own killer bot hadn’t a clue about how to make coffee. Oh, how many hours of entertainment that would bring, especially to someone like Clint. 

Not waiting for the coffee, because he doesn’t have time, Steve jumps right into the heart of the matter. “So everything’s done then? Ultron’s eliminated?”

“Yep.” Tony turns to look at him. He smiles, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. “Gone. You know that plan we had worked. So- all gone.” He makes a sing song tilt to his voice.

“That plan. Yep, the worm.” Steve waits.

“The worm. All gone. Wiped away with Ultron.”

“Tell me how that worked again?” Steve reaches for the mug of coffee as Tony offers it to him. It’s not how he likes it. It has a ton of milk – Steve likes it black and strong. “You know how I’m trying to increase my skillset.”

“You leave the brainy stuff to me, champ.” He sips the coffee. 

Steve hides his face by turning slightly away from Tony. This thing in front of him isn’t Tony. It’s a concoction of Ultron’s design, a creation meant to lure him so that Ultron has the time to infect Steve’s brain, escape the worm, and eventually – what? 

Become a real boy.

Ultron always had a Pinocchio complex. When he designed and created Vision, his ultimate goal had been to occupy the mind of the Vision. Ultron lost that battle. Now, he’s inside of Steve, eating away at his consciousness, trapping him in some strange delusional reality. 

“Come on, let’s go down to the workshop.”

Steve doesn’t respond to Tony right away. His realization sends chills up his spine. It’s never been about Tony at all. Ultron wanted Steve. All along. He wanted Steve – other than escaping the worm, finding refuge in Steve’s brain is perfectly logical.

“You never wanted Tony, did you?” He places his mug down on the countertop. He needs to get out and get out fast. He needs the serum to work it’s magic and get Ultron out of his head. 

“What’s that?” Not-Tony says.

Steve glares at the image of Tony before him, the puppet that Ultron controls. “You wanted me all along. One way or another you wanted me because you still want to be human. After all that destruction in Sokovia – all you wanted was to be a human. Forget that you think humans are faulty. You still long to be a human.” 

Ultron-Tony tilts his head slightly. He’s computing. “I think we need to get Cho in here right away.”

“Cho’s not coming. You don’t have enough data on her and the serum to have her walk into the room. She’s never coming. It’s just you and me. Ultron.” Steve clenches his hands. 

“You’ve made a grave mistake, Captain. You should have never played your hand. I assume you don’t win at poker very often.”

Steve smiles, sardonic and cold. “You’d think a soldier would love poker, but see, I didn’t grow up as a soldier. I grew up as a sick kid. Chess was always my game.”

“And so, you give up your Queen?” The figure of Tony sheds away as Ultron’s metallic body appears. He steps closer to Steve.

“Sometimes you have to give up a valuable piece to win the game,” Steve sneers and then the world drops away around him. A whirling wind of pixels and particles hurtle around him, slamming into him like sleet and ice cold hail. He squints his eyes and cannot make out his adversary. “You’re not going to win. You can’t win.”

A voice from the blistering wind laughs. “You don’t understand, dear Captain. In only moments I will have complete control of your autonomic system. You’ll be a visitor in your own body. You’ll watch paralyzed as I command every movement you make and every word you utter. His pitiful worm cannot destroy me. It cannot stop me. I have become you.”

“You don’t even know me.” 

There are truths in this world. Truths that Steve knows. The truths about himself are clear but mainly only known to himself. Ultron batters his consciousness, trying to shred it. Steve holds onto what he knows is true.

It isn’t the serum that makes him who he is. 

It never was.

According to Doctor Erskine the serum simply amplifies the character of the person. It’s not about getting the serum to stop Ultron – it’s about Steve stopping Ultron. The serum has nothing to do with it at all.

It’s about belief. About trust. About knowing who he is.

The pummeling storm dies away and Steve’s on an operating table. The sterile room around him is glossy and white. He’s locked, bound to the table unable to move. Ultron’s above him, a hovering presence. His mechanical arms work, shaving away Steve’s hair, sawing into his skull. Ultron dissects his brain. Steve hears the plop of his brain matter falling to the floor.

“You see dear Captain, I’m already here. I’m already replacing you.”

Closing his eyes, Steve wipes away the horrific images, the sounds, the smells of the surgery invading his brain. It isn’t real. It’s meant to terrify him so that he cannot fight. Steve calms and allows the peace of his self-awareness grow.

_I’ve always been that 95 pound weakling with a heart._

_I’ve always tried my best to do right._

_Sometimes I don’t know what right is._

_Sometimes I do and I don’t like it._

_I fear that other people look up to me._

_I fear the idea of Captain America._

_Being Captain America is exhausting._

_But being Captain America lets me be nearer to him. Closer to the one I love who may never love me. In that love I find happiness, bliss, and somehow might find my way to forgiveness._

Through the chaos ripping apart his brain, a serenity flows through him like the first summer day warming his soul. He leans hard into that feeling, allowing it to suffuse his consciousness, while at the same time releasing his hold on the power within him. The power doesn’t come from the serum. It never did.

The warmth surrounding him, protecting him from Ultron’s assault becomes a bright light. Stronger still until he experiences it not only as a sensation but as thought itself.

_Stay with me. Stay always with me, Steve. You’ve been forgiven. I’ve been lost. I cannot tell you how long I’ve wished for you. I cannot tell you how much I’ve wanted you. It’s always been a game with us. A struggle to fulfill a destiny that someone else wrote. It’s time to change the story. It’s time for us._

He recognizes Tony - _his_ Tony instantly and with the integration of their consciousnesses together, they expunge the last remnants of Ultron. Steve opens his eyes, and the operating room disintegrates. The grotesqueness disappears. Ultron standing before him flakes away, whispering away like a few grains of sand blown away in the wind. 

Steve awakes to reality and sees Tony hunched over him, a series of probes and wiring hang from his head and chest. They snake around him and disappear under Steve’s neck and head. He blinks a few times, trying to discern if this is reality, if the world will smear around him like it did in the virtual one. It doesn’t. The image stays steady and Tony smiles at him.

“Welcome back, Steve.”

“Really?”

Tony smiles. “Yeah, really. We almost lost you. It was only a matter of minutes before the worm completely consumed Ultron. If we hadn’t been able to separate you-.”

“So, you did it. You separated me,” Steve says and tries to sit up. 

Tony presses a hand on his chest. “Not exactly.” He jingles the wires connecting them. “We kind of did that together.”

“Together?”

Tony nods. “Yeah. Together.”

CHAPTER 7

Ross gives up after all evidence of Ultron disappears from the internet. The contamination of the world’s virtual highway is cured. Ross chops at the bit, wanting to control them, wanting to put them away in a prison in the middle of an ocean somewhere. It might be for another day, but the Avengers have done too much good to not forgive a mistake. There will be consequences, they all know it. But for a while, they all celebrate the little victories. 

“It’s good to have you back. Both of you,” Natasha says as she leans back in her lounge chair. They are all lingering on the back balcony of the compound in Upstate New York after a celebratory dinner. She sips her wine and offers another toast. “To Tony for possibly being the most thick headed pining lovebird I know.”

“I’m not sure that’s-.” Tony starts but then Steve catches his gaze. “Okay, maybe a little.” 

Sam’s not as relaxed. He stands next to the railing with his arms crossed over his chest, not at ease. “You sure Ross isn’t coming knocking on our door come Monday?”

“He’ll come,” Tony says and fiddles with his glass of wine. “We’ll have to deal with it when it comes. There will be a push for oversight.”

“Is that bad?” Natasha asks.

“It’s only bad if we don’t have a say in it,” Steve says. He’s close to Tony, but not too close. They’ve spent the last few days circling one another like the Earth and the Moon. Steve wonders which one of them is the Earth and which one is the Moon. The gravity of their emotional pull holds them together, but at the same time, they’ve spent too many years denying each other and barking at one another just to keep the space between them.

“So, we negotiate?” Tony says. His expression is thoughtful but agitated. 

“It’s the only way. We can’t sign the dotted line without a say in how it’s going to work, Tony. You saw what happened with SHIELD. Completely overtaken with Hydra. How would you like to be doing their work again? Or someone even worse?”

“Even worse?” Vision is sitting close to Wanda. He’s projecting his ‘human’ image. Steve’s noticed that Wanda always orbits him. Or he always revolves around her. It’s logical – they’re connected in a metaphysical dance.

“There’s always someone worse,” Steve states. He’s seen what’s worse and he never wants to see it again. “We face what’s coming and we do it together. We find a way through it.”

“Always the optimist,” Tony comments.

After the conversation dies down and the lightning bugs flicker over the long fields of the compound, rising up to the Spring tree tops, the members of the Avengers drift away until only Steve and Tony are left.

“Are we going to tell them?”

Steve looks straight ahead, watching the twinkling lights of the insects in the branches of the trees. _Do you want to?_

_Not really._

Steve turns and smiles. The light from the windows falls over Tony like a halo. “Somethings we do as a team, somethings are best left private.” He pauses and reaches out his hand. They’ve barely touched, what they have is so intimate it’s hard to think about touching. Tony clasps it and the feedback spark between them intensifies the sensation. “Do you think it will last?”

“I don’t even know why we still have it.”

Steve leads Tony closer to him; they’re nearly touching now. “It’ll be useful in combat.”

“Sure. Sure it will.” Tony’s staring at his mouth. “But we could find so many other ways it would be useful, interesting.”

Before Steve dissolves into the feelings echoing through Tony, Steve pulls back and asks, “You know I never knew. Why didn’t you tell me? I thought my feelings were only just mine.”

“I couldn’t.” Tony drops his gaze and Steve hates himself a little more. “Don’t do that, Steve. I couldn’t because it meant exposing myself, to the possibilities, being vulnerable to the potential of something so momentous – I couldn’t hope. Do you see? I couldn’t hope.”

“I see. I get it.” He does. He never confessed until the end when he’d had nothing to lose. “And now?”

“Now,” Tony says and stalls. His body leans forward against Steve. He grasps both of Steve’s hands. His gaze lifts. “And now, with this connection, this link, I’m exposed whether or not I like it. I’m vulnerable and…”

“And?”

“I’m vulnerable in the best hands.”

“I lied to you.”

“Yes, yes you did.” Tony lays his head on Steve’s shoulder. “You did and I know exactly how you feel about it. I know exactly who you are. You know how angry I was about it. You know me.” _You know me_. “That means so much to me.”

Steve tentatively places his hand in Tony’s hair. “If we didn’t have this bond then-.”

“There’s no then, Steve,” Tony whispers into the fabric of his shirt. _If this goes away today, then I will always know who you are. You’ll always know who I am. Always. You accept me the way I am._

“I love you the way you are. I always will.” He could have used their link to say it, but it has more power this way – out in the wide world. He hungers for a kiss, to share something intimate and profound with Tony. 

“You don’t have to ask.”

“But I do. May I kiss you Tony?”

“Yes.”

It may have only been a kiss or maybe it was more. Later, Steve wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Love is no fairy tale with a long time ago beginning and a happily ever after end. Love isn’t natural, instead it’s something irrational, illogical, and purely inexplicable. There is no science to dissect it, there is no reasoning to understand it. Love wasn’t meant to be by the biologics of life, but love exists as an error; it exists as a solution, as a savior, as a point of return. It’s something truly human, something that Ultron could never understand.

Love, Steve learns, is an error in the system.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> There really isn't any dubious consent issues, I warn for it because the possibility is referenced and that's it.  
> This story should be longer, but I ran out of time. So I hope like it!
> 
> I want to thank all of the readers - all of my readers throughout the years. It has been a very tough year for me in the writing department. After this story, I think I am taking a break. I love the Stony fandom! May it live forever!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [ART for An Error in the System](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27760066) by [jellybeanforest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeanforest/pseuds/jellybeanforest)




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